Observing chaos for quantum-dot microlasers with external feedback

Ferdinand Albert; Caspar Hopfmann; Stephan Reitzenstein; Christian Schneider; Sven Höfling; Lukas Worschech; Martin Kamp; Wolfgang Kinzel; Alfred Forchel; Ido Kanter

doi:10.1038/ncomms1370

Observing chaos for quantum-dot microlasers with external feedback

Ferdinand Albert, Caspar Hopfmann, Stephan Reitzenstein, Christian Schneider, Sven Höfling, Lukas Worschech, Martin Kamp, Wolfgang Kinzel, Alfred Forchel, Ido Kanter

Department of Physics - at Bar-Ilan University

University of Würzburg

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

78 Scopus citations

Abstract

Chaos presents a striking and fascinating phenomenon of nonlinear systems. A common aspect of such systems is the presence of feedback that couples the output signal partially back to the input. Feedback coupling can be well controlled in optoelectronic devices such as conventional semiconductor lasers that provide bench-top platforms for the study of chaotic behaviour and high bit rate random number generation. Here we experimentally demonstrate that chaos can be observed for quantum-dot microlasers operating close to the quantum limit at nW output powers. Applying self-feedback to a quantum-dot microlaser results in a dramatic change in the photon statistics wherein strong, super-thermal photon bunching is indicative of random-intensity fluctuations associated with the spiked emission of light. Our experiments reveal that gain competition of few quantum dots in the active layer enhances the influence of self-feedback and will open up new avenues for the study of chaos in quantum systems.

Original language	English
Article number	366
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	2
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1370
State	Published - 21 Jun 2011

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank M. Emmerling and A. Wolf for expert sample preparation. This work was supported by the European Commission as part of the ‘TREASURE’ project, the DFG via research Grant No. DFG Re2974/2-1, and the State of Bavaria.

Funding

We thank M. Emmerling and A. Wolf for expert sample preparation. This work was supported by the European Commission as part of the ‘TREASURE’ project, the DFG via research Grant No. DFG Re2974/2-1, and the State of Bavaria.

Funders	Funder number
European Commission	DFG Re2974/2-1

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AU - Worschech, Lukas

AU - Kamp, Martin

AU - Kinzel, Wolfgang

AU - Forchel, Alfred

AU - Kanter, Ido

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Observing chaos for quantum-dot microlasers with external feedback

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