Locking of laser cavity solitons trapped by defects in VCSELs

Laser cavity solitons (LCS) are transverse, nonlinear, self-localized and dissipative states that possess both translational and phase invariance. LCS interaction and synchronisation properties in broad-area semiconductor lasers have the potential for massive parallelism and the formation of complex arrays. Phase-locked bound states of solitons have been predicted in mode-locked lasers for the temporal case [1] and in lasers with saturable absorbers for the spatial case [2]. Corresponding phase-quadrature states have been observed in fibre lasers [1].