Research Lines. Nonlinear Optics and Dynamics of Optoelectronic Devices

Nonlinear Optics and Dynamics of Optoelectronic Devices

Research Lines

Description

The general topic of this line is the study of the light-matter non-linear interaction and its consequences towards applications in emerging photonics technologies. We study emitter systems (lasers, mainly semiconductor ones) as well as systems subject to optical injection (semiconductor optical amplifiers, Kerr media, parametric oscillators). Most of the research carried out on this line can be classified in two complementary categories: The study of temporal evolution (dynamics) and the generation of non homogeneous light distributions (pattern formation).

Dynamics of semiconductor lasers and optical amplifiers. This includes aspects like temporal variations in the beam characteristics and nonlinear effects in edge emitting lasers as well as the mechanisms for selection, destabilization and switching of the polarization state in vertical cavity lasers, with the perspective of possible applications in information and communication technologies. One topic of research focuses on the use of chaotic lasers to increase the security in optical communications, studying the chaotic dynamics of lasers subject to optical or electro-optical feedback and the synchronization of chaotic lasers.

Formation of spatial structures and its dynamics in optical cavities filled with nonlinear media (Kerr, optical parametric oscillators, second harmonic generation). This study implications range from fundamental aspects like the existence of macroscopic effects of the quantum fluctuations, to potential applications for all optical processing of information and images. The bistable localized structures (solitons) that appear in the transverse plane in these devices, as well as in semiconductor lasers, have potential application as reconfigurable memory, shift registers or parallel-serial converters. Furthermore the possibility of using nonlinear optical cavities to perform all-optical contrast enhancement and contour recognition of images has also been studied.

IFISC-OSA student chapter started in March 2009