Synchronization, Noise and Coherency in lasers
Résumé
Synchronization of two oscillators is a basic process in physics, which is widely encountered as well in laser physics as in optical telecommunication applications (clock recovery, cryptography, routing ...). In optics, it uses generally optical injection, which consists in the unidirectional coupling between two lasers, called the “master” for the source of seeded photons and the “slave” for the seeded laser. The two main parameters are the detuning (or the frequency difference between the “master” and the “slave” lasers) and the injected power but we have shown that the coherency and the polarization do play a role. If this phenomenon has been extensively described since the birth of lasers, there are still new observations and interpretations to be given. The lasers under study are made of semiconductor materials (bulk, quantum dashes, quantum dots). After having introduced the different properties of optical injection, we will present in this talk an overview of our work in this topic.