Wave pattern and weak localization of chaotic versus scarred modes in stadium-shaped surface-emitting lasers

Abstract

We explore the lasing mode selection between the chaotic and scarred modes in stadium-shaped vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). Experimental results reveal that the spatial gain distribution in the active layer of a VCSEL can be modified via the aperture size to favor the generation of either the chaotic or the scarred modes. Experimentally obtained chaotic and scarred modes are further employed to perform statistical analysis of wave function intensities for making a comparison with predictions based on the nonlinear sigma model. We verify that the scarring effect can be quantitatively relevant to the weak-localization correction in the intensity probability distribution.