title: Light-mode condensation in actively-mode-locked lasers.
abstract: We show that the formation of pulses in actively mode-locked lasers exhibits in certain conditions a transition of the laser mode system to a light pulse state that is similar to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). The study is done in the framework of statistical light-mode dynamics with a mapping between the distribution of the laser eigenmodes to the equilibrium statistical physics of noninteracting bosons in an external potential. The light-mode BEC transition occurs for a mode-locking modulation that has a power law dependence on time with an exponent smaller than 2.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion-IIT, Haifa 32000, Israel.
authors.forename: Rafi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Weill
authors.forename: Baruch
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Fischer
authors.forename: Omri
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Gat