Interplay of excitability and spatial effects in vertical-cavity surface-emitting optical amplifiers

时空现象在许多自然系统以及实验室实验中被观察到。在化学和生物系统中经常观察到的一种效应是空间自由度和兴奋性的相互作用，这是一个描述一旦扰动幅度超过一定阈值水平时系统的扰动无关响应的概念。仅在最近才在半导体光放大器中证明了在与发射光的传播正交的方向上传播的可激发波的存在，即，一种半导体激光器，在低于其激光阈值时工作，由主激光器光注入。半导体激光器和光放大器是具有高技术相关性的器件，也是光学中非线性动力系统的范例。因此，该项目的目的是探索这些设备中存在哪些不同类型的可激发波，并描述其空间和时间动态，包括几种可激发波的相互作用。这些波可能在全光通信的可能概念中被证明是有用的。此外，半导体光放大器和其他介质中的可激发空间波的相似性和差异将得到强调。例如，理论上预测了半导体光放大器中可激发波相互作用行为的新可能性。因此，一般的可激发的空间结构的理解，希望能得到丰富。

Spatio-temporal phenomena are observed in many natural systems as well as in laboratory experiments. An effect that is often observed in chemical and biological systems is the interplay of spatial degrees of freedom and excitability, a concept that describes the perturbation-independent response of a system once the perturbation amplitude has surpassed a certain threshold level. Only very recently the existence of excitable waves that travel in the direction orthogonal to the propagation of the emitted light has been demonstrated in a semiconductor optical amplifier, i.e., a semiconductor laser that is operated below its lasing threshold and optically injected by a master laser. Semiconductor lasers and optical amplifiers are devices of high technological relevance as well as paradigms of non-linear dynamical systems in optics. Therefore, it is the aim of this project to explore what different kinds of excitable waves do exist in these devices and to characterize their spatial and temporal dynamics, including the interaction of several of the excitable waves. These waves might prove to be useful in possible concepts of all optical communication. Moreover similarities and differences of excitable spatial waves in semiconductor optical amplifiers and other media are to be highlighted. For example, new possibilities in the interaction behaviour of excitable waves in semiconductor optical amplifiers were predicted theoretically. Thus, the understanding of excitable spatial structures in general is hoped to be enriched.