Pulsing and excitable solitons in a semiconductor laser with saturable absorber

Cavity solitons (CS) are controllable localized light peaks on a low-intensity, homogeneous (or quasi homogeneous) background and offer a variety of applications from optical memories to all-optical delay lines. A semiconductor laser (VCSEL) with an intracavity saturable absorber realizes a cavity soliton laser, where the CS sit over a zero-intensity background, and may behave as independent microlasers. In this system, stable CS can exist in the interval where the upper homogeneous stationary branch coexists with the stable non-lasing solution.