Abstract

We elucidate lasing characteristics, intensity statistics, and glassy behavior of lasing systems with varying degrees of openness and intrinsic disorder. In this pursuit, we consider three distinct dye-doped polymer based lasing systems, i.e., a planar waveguide random laser (PWRL) and two different geometries of whispering gallery mode resonators (WGMRs), viz., spherical and bottle microresonators. In WGMRs, improved optical confinement enhances the quality factor of resonances and provides a low threshold and fast saturation of the number of lasing modes with pump strength. Additionally, covariance across the lasing mode intensities reveals the presence of strong mode competition. In PWRL, the statistical study reveals bimodal probability distribution (PD) of modal intensity fluctuations near-above threshold with their gradual transition to heavy tail PD far above the threshold, while the PDs for WGMRs were found to remain unimodal throughout the pumped regimes with transition to positively skewed unimodal distribution above the threshold. We also report correspondence between the onset of bimodal PD and the spin glass phase near-above threshold in PWRL. Such observations are absent for WGMRs, wherein the spin glass behavior at and above the threshold are relatively suppressed. The non-zero value of the spectral intensity fluctuation overlap parameter in WGMRs manifests the inherent disorder held by the system. We also discuss the requirement of strong mode coupling achieved by virtue of openness for the realization of glassy behavior in lasing systems.

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