Cavity Soliton Laser based on mutually coupled semiconductor microresonators

We report on experimental observation of localized structures in two mutually coupled broad-areahttp://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/images/calendar.gif semiconductor resonators. These structures coexist with a dark homogeneous background and they have the same properties as cavity solitons without requiring the presence of a driving beam into the system. They can be switched individually on and off by means of a local addressing beam

Cavity Light Bullets: 3D Localized Structures in a Nonlinear Optical Resonator

We consider the paraxial model for a nonlinear resonator with a saturable absorber beyond the mean-field limit and develop a method to study the modulational instabilities leading to pattern formation in all three spatial dimensions. For achievable parametric domains we observe total radiation confinement and the formation of 3D localised bright structures. At difference from freely propagating light bullets, here the self-organization proceeds from the resonator feedback, combined with diffraction and nonlinearity. Such "cavity" light bullets can be independently excited and erased by appropriate pulses, and once created, they endlessly travel the cavity roundtrip. Also, the pulses can shift in the transverse direction, following external field gradients.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, simulations files available at http://www.ba.infn.it/~maggipin/PRLmovies.htm, submitted to Physical Review Letters on 24 March 200

Stable autosolitons in dispersive media with saturable gain and absorption

We introduce the simplest one-dimensional model of a dispersive optical medium with saturable dissipative nonlinearity and filtering (dispersive loss) which gives rise to stable solitary pulses (autosolitons). In the particular case when the dispersive loss is absent, the same model may also be interpreted as describing a stationary field in a planar optical waveguide with uniformly distributed saturable gain and absorption. In a certain region of the model's parameter space, two coexisting solitary-pulse solutions are found numerically, one of which may be stable. Solving the corresponding linearized eigenvalue problem, we identify stability borders for the solitary pulses in their parametric plane. Beyond one of the borders, the symmetric pulse is destroyed by asymmetric perturbations, and at the other border it undergoes a Hopf bifurcation, which may turn it into a breather.Comment: A latex text file and four ps files with figures. Physics Letters A, in pres

Mid-Band Dissipative Spatial Solitons

We show dissipative spatial solitons in nonlinear optical micro-resonators in which the refractive index is laterally modulated. In addition to "normal" and "staggered" dissipative solitons, similar to those in spatially modulated conservative systems, a narrow "mid-band" soliton is shown, having no counterparts in conservative systems

Interaction of cavity solitons in degenerate optical parametric oscillators

Numerical studies together with asymptotic and spectral analysis establish regimes where soliton pairs in degenerate optical parametric oscillators fuse, repel, or form bound states. A novel bound state stabilized by coupled internal oscillations is predicted.Comment: 3 page

Obtaining single-cycle pulses from a mode-locked laser

In all existing mode-locked lasers, the ultimate limit on the output pulse duration is set by the bandwidth of the gain medium. Yet the technique of coherent mode locking allows one to generate broadband pulses from a laser with a linearly narrowband active medium by exploiting the coherent properties of the amplifier. In this work we numerically demonstrate how to use this technique for the generation of single-cycle pulses directly from a mode-locked oscillator