Photon localization in lattices of coupled vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with dimensionalities between one and two

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Abstract
Arrays consisting of coupled vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers represent a model system for photonic lattices. Fluctuations among array elements, caused by wafer nonuniformities or processing defects, can lead to photon-mode localization, thus deteriorating the spatial coherence of such devices. The influence of cavity nonuniformities on the near-field and far-field patterns in arrays of different dimensionalities is analyzed in the framework of coupled-mode theory. It is shown that, for the same degree of disorder, photon localization is drastically reduced as the array dimensionality increases.