Optical Solitons and Frequency Comb Generation - Abstract
Slepneva, Svetlana
We will discuss the properties of long cavity frequency sweeping lasers and demonstrate various scenarios of coherence deterioration in such lasers. The long cavity lasers are known to demonstrate rich variety of dynamical regimes including formation of localised structures and transition to turbulence. The interest to frequency sweeping long cavity lasers has also recently increased due to their application for imaging and sensing. For these applications, the stability of the laser is an important parameter as it directly influences its coherence and therefore, for example, the quality of the obtained images. We investigated static, quasi static and synchronisation regimes of such lasers and analysed possible instabilities in such system. Experimentally, we considered different laser configurations which has allowed us to study the influence of the cavity length, frequency sweeping speed and the detuning. Numerically, we used a model based on a system of delayed differential equations. The numerical simulation of our model showed excellent agreement with the experimental data. In particularly, we studied the formation of dark pulses, and showed that they are closely connected to Nozaki-Bekki holes previously predicted in the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation.