Computational physics applied to photonic devices

Abstract We all know that the first laser device was realized by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Labs in 1960. Less known is that the very first computer simulations of the relaxation oscillations displayed by Maiman’s laser were also performed in 1960 on a digital IBM 704 computer. The reason is that lasers and almost all photonic devices are described by nonlinear equations that are more often than not impossible to be solved analytically, i.e., on a piece of paper. Since then the development and applications of lasers and photonic devices have progressed hand in hand with computer simulations and numerical programming. In this review, we introduce and numerically solve the model equations for a variety of devices, lasers, lasers with modulated parameters, lasers with injection, Kerr resonators, saturable absorbers, and optical parametric oscillators. Using computer simulations, we demonstrate stability and instability of nonlinear solutions in these photonic devices via pitchfork, saddle-node, Hopf and Turing bifurcations; bistability, nonlinear oscillations, deterministic chaos, Turing patterns, conservative solitons; bright, dark and grey cavity solitons; frequency combs, spatial disorder, spatio-temporal chaos, defect-mediated turbulence and even rogue waves. There has been a one-to-one correspondence between computer simulations of all these nonlinear features and laboratory experiments with applications in ultrafast optical communications, optical memories, neural networks, frequency standards, optical clocks, future GPS, astronomy, and quantum technologies. All of this has been made possible by ’novel insights into spatio-temporal dynamics of lasers, nonlinear and quantum optical systems, achieved through the development and application of powerful techniques for small-scale computing’ (2011 Occhialini Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics and Societa’ Italiana di Fisica).