Cavity soliton mobility in semiconductor microresonators (Q2486247)

The paper offers a brief review of basic results concerning the existence and stability of various periodic and localized patterns (the latter ones are called cavity solitons), and motion of the solitons, in two dynamical two-dimensional models of a dissipative semiconductor medium driven by an external beam of light (``holding beam'') and injection current. In particular, the cavity solitons have a potential to be used as controllable pixels in optical memory devices. The first model includes equations for the signal electric field (this equation includes the diffraction term, in the usual paraxial approximation), and for density of carriers (this equation includes a diffusion term); the second model involves an additional equation for the local temperature. In the case of the first model, new results are reported for a case when the holding beam has embedded vorticity (a ``doughnut'' structure). In that case, a cavity soliton is seen to be trapped by a ring-shaped area where the doughnut mode has its maximum. In addition, feeling the phase gradient in the azimuthal direction, the soliton starts to circulate along the ring. In the second model, a new effect is spontaneous chaotic motion of the soliton, which is explained by the fact that the soliton is trying to escape a local temperature perturbation, created by the soliton itself. It is stressed that the spontaneous motion of the soliton seems as stochastic, although the model is a completely deterministic one.