Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Perego, Auro M
• Garbin, Bruno
• Gustave, François
• Barland, Stephane
• Prati, Franco
• de Valcárcel, Germán J

Titel

Coherent master equation for laser modelocking

Ist Teil von

• Nature communications, 2020-01, Vol.11 (1), p.311-311, Article 311

Ort / Verlag

England: Nature Publishing Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Modelocked lasers constitute the fundamental source of optically-coherent ultrashort-pulsed radiation, with huge impact in science and technology. Their modeling largely rests on the master equation (ME) approach introduced in 1975 by Hermann A. Haus. However, that description fails when the medium dynamics is fast and, ultimately, when light-matter quantum coherence is relevant. Here we set a rigorous and general ME framework, the coherent ME (CME), that overcomes both limitations. The CME predicts strong deviations from Haus ME, which we substantiate through an amplitude-modulated semiconductor laser experiment. Accounting for coherent effects, like the Risken-Nummedal-Graham-Haken multimode instability, we envisage the usefulness of the CME for describing self-modelocking and spontaneous frequency comb formation in quantum-cascade and quantum-dot lasers. Furthermore, the CME paves the way for exploiting the rich phenomenology of coherent effects in laser design, which has been hampered so far by the lack of a coherent ME formalism.