Complex nonlinear dynamics of polarization and transverse modes in a broad-area VCSEL

Abstract

Lasers can exhibit nonlinear and chaotic dynamics driven by the interaction of multiple lasing modes, and investigating the different scenarios of mode competition and bifurcations of their dynamics is of great interest on a fundamental level as well as in view of applications. We study the dynamics of a broad-area vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) in solitary continuous-wave operation with a comprehensive investigation of its polarization state, lasing spectra, near-field distributions, and temporal dynamics. Fluctuations at the frequency of birefringence splitting and other frequency components develop in a series of bifurcations. The bifurcations coincide with changes of the transverse lasing modes and/or the polarization state, demonstrating the importance of both the spatial and polarization degrees of freedom for mode competition. As a consequence, the inherent nonlinear dynamics of broad-area VCSELs is significantly more complex than the dynamics of VCSELs with a single spatial mode.

15 pages, 13 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Deterministic polarization chaos from a laser diode
• Massively parallel ultrafast random bit generation with a chip-scale laser
• Sensitive control of broad-area semiconductor lasers by cavity shape

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Impact of cavity geometry on microlaser dynamics
• Chaos from a free-running broad-area VCSEL
• Synchronization of complex spatio-temporal dynamics with lasers
• Spontaneous phase locking in a broad-area semiconductor laser
• Polarization and tranverse mode nonlinear dynamics in a multimode VCSEL
• Random number generation from a self-chaotic broad-area VCSEL