Mechanisms of spatiotemporal mode-locking

By Logan G. Wright, P. Sidorenko, H. Pourbeyram, Zachary M. Ziegler, Andrei Isichenko, Boris A. Malomed, C. Menyuk, Demetrios N. Christodoulides, Frank Wise. 2019

156 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Mode-locking is a process in which different modes of an optical resonator establish stable synchronization through non-linear interactions. This self-organization underlies light sources that enable many modern scientific applications, such as ultrafast and high-field optics and frequency combs. Despite this, mode-locking has almost exclusively referred to the self-organization of light in a single dimension—time. Here we present a theoretical approach—attractor dissection—to understand three-dimensional spatiotemporal mode-locking. The key idea is to find a specific, minimal reduced model for each distinct type of three-dimensional pulse, and thus identify the important intracavity effects responsible for its formation and stability. An intuition for the results follows from the minimum loss principle, the idea that a laser strives to find the configuration of intracavity light that minimizes loss (maximizes gain extraction). Through this approach, we identify and explain several distinct forms of spatiotemporal mode-locking. These phases of coherent laser light have no analogues in one dimension and are supported by measurements of the three-dimensional field, which reveals spatiotemporal mode-locked states that comprise more than 10 7 cavity modes. Our results should facilitate the discovery and understanding of new higher-dimensional forms of coherent light which, in turn, may enable new applications. Mode-locking of lasers can be understood as self-organization, and the three-dimensional case of spatiotemporal mode-locking can described using attractor dissection theory, which helps develop an intuition for this complex case.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Computer Networks and Communications, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4814e06affd0d7cbdefa04b76405f5f2760cdea5

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Computer Networks and Communications

Liang Jie Wong

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

Citations in the corpus

Roadmap on spatiotemporal light fields (2022, background): “Multidimensional nonlinear wave physics may also advance lasers based on stepindex multimode gain media, such as the multimode transient dynamics that have been predicted to dramatically increase achievable mode-locked pulse energy [13, 15].”
Topological dissipation in a time-multiplexed photonic resonator network (2021, unknown): “Such ‘dissipation engineer-ing’ plays an important role in superconducting circuits, ultracold atoms and photonics, where it is used for reservoir engineering 9 , laser mode-locking 10,11 , and quantum and photonic computing 12–14 .”