Abstract

In a wide-aperture with a saturable absorber, there are such the dissipative structures as switching waves (fronts between lasing and nonlasing states moving in transverse direction) and laser autosolitons (localised spots of lasing on the background of nonlasing state) [1]. Similar structures can be generated in related schemes, for example in fibers and continuous media with nonlinear gain and absorption [2]. These structures, especially optical autosolitons, may be of different types with various dynamics, and are promising for optical information processing. In the report we present a theory and results of computer simulations of the laser autosolitons and discuss their main types and features.

© 1998 IEEE