Temporal localized Turing patterns in mode-locked semiconductor lasers

Abstract

Spatiotemporal mode-locking is a promising lasing regime for developing coherent sources for multimode nonlinear photonics. In this paper we show that large-aspect-ratio vertical external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VECSELs) can be operated in this regime. The emitted pulses exhibit a spatial profile resulting from the phase locking between an axial plane wave and a set of tilted waves having a hexagonal arrangement in the Fourier space. Moreover, we show that these pulsating patterns are temporally localized, i.e., they can be individually addressed by pulsing the optical pump. The theoretical analysis discloses that the emergence of these pulsating patterns is a signature of a Turing instability whose critical wave vector depends on the spherical aberrations of the optical elements. Our result reveals that large-aspect-ratio VECSELs offer unique opportunities for studying fully developed spatiotemporal dynamics and for applications to multidimensional control of light.