Symmetry-broken pulse-timing sequences in micropillar lasers with optical delayed feedback

Pulses or limit-cycle oscillations in lasers can originate from a variety of physical processes, from self-pulsing to mode-locking and frequency combs. Lasers with saturable absorber are well known to be able to produce self-pulsing regimes. However, these regimes are difficult to stabilize and give rise to a lot of pulse-to-pulse jitter. A convenient way to stabilize self-pulsing in these systems is to subject them to delayed optical feedback. When working below the solitatory laser self-pulsing regime, regenerative dissipative temporal solitons [1] , [2] may appear with a wealth of intriguing dynamical regimes. We report here recent experimental and theoretical results on the dynamics of a micropillar semiconductor laser with integrated saturable absorber and delayed optical feedback working in this regime.