Anomalous single-mode lasing induced by nonlinearity and the non-Hermitian skin effect

Abstract

Single-mode operation is a desirable but elusive property for lasers operating at high pump powers. Typically, single-mode lasing is attainable close to threshold, but increasing the pump power gives rise to multiple lasing peaks due to inter-modal gain competition. We propose a laser with the opposite behavior: multi-mode lasing occurs at low output powers, but pumping beyond a certain value produces a single lasing mode, with all other candidate modes experiencing negative effective gain. This behavior arises in a lattice of coupled optical resonators with non-fine-tuned asymmetric couplings, and is caused by an interaction between nonlinear gain saturation and the non-Hermitian skin effect. The single-mode lasing is observed in both frequency domain and time domain simulations. It is robust against on-site disorder, and scales up to large lattice sizes. This finding might be useful for implementing high-power laser arrays.

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• Skin modes in a nonlinear Hatano-Nelson model
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• Transition from topological to chaos in the nonlinear Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model
• Loss-difference-induced localization in a non-Hermitian honeycomb photonic lattice
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• Non-Hermitian generalizations of the Yao-Lee model augmented by SO(3)-symmetry-breaking terms
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• Unconventional and robust light-matter interactions based on the non-Hermitian skin effect
• Non-Hermitian skin effect and lasing of absorbing open-boundary modes in photonic crystals
• Topological phase transition in fluctuating imaginary gauge fields
• Restoration of non-Hermitian bulk-boundary correspondence by counterbalancing skin effect
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• Experimental observation of energy-band Riemann surface
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