Yaparov V. Topological solitons in active optical cavities

The work deals with the experimental and theoretical investigation of a resonant spatial self-organization responsible for spontaneous or stimulated (controlled) symmetry breaking in bistable active optical cavities that results in formation of stable self-sustained transverse optical structures (topological solitons) which are independent of boundary conditions. The nonlinear processes and mechanisms of the resonant spatial self-organization for lasers and optical wave mixing oscillators are studied in details both experimentally and numerically. The existence of various types of cavity spatial solitons has been proved, namely: the vortex laser soliton in wide-aperture laser-like two-wave mixing optical generator with saturable absorber; the vector laser solitons with dynamical polarization topological defects in wide-aperture bistable laser with polarization isotropic gain and saturable absorption; the spatial field structures which contain the phase domain wall with the screw point phase topological defect and the laser soliton with combined vortex-wall phase topological defect in wide-aperture bistable optical generator with a mixed laser-parametric gain.