Stabilization of Laser Emission by non-Hermitian Potentials

Light emission from single lasers and laser arrays can suffer from dynamical spatiotemporal instabilities leading to emitted beams temporally unstable and with low spatial quality. We propose a feasible stabilization mechanism for laser emission based on non-Hermitian potentials, i.e. simultaneous modulations of refractive index and gain-loss. The proposed spatiotemporal modulations can be introduced by potentials directly acting on the field or on carriers. The stabilization can be based on the suppression of the modulation instability, on the stabilization of specific stationary solutions or on field localization. These stabilization mechanisms are applied in vertical-cavity semiconductor lasers, single units and arrays of Edge Emitting Lasers.