Devil's staircase in three-dimensional coherent waves localized on Lissajous parametric surfaces

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate the significance of the longitudinal-transverse coupling in the mesoscopic regime by using a high-Q laser resonator as an analog experiment. The longitudinal-transverse coupling is found to lead to the three-dimensional (3D) coherent waves that are localized on the parametric surfaces with Lissajous transverse patterns. More strikingly, experimental results reveal that the mode locking of the 3D coherent states forms a nearly complete Devil's staircase with the hierarchical ordering.