Coherence, Chimeras and Passage Time Statistics in Light

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Abstract: Coherence and randomness coexist in light sources and influence their applications, such as optical communications and imaging. Measures of spatio-temporal coherence of light are traditionally provided by correlation functions. As a laser makes the transition from below threshold, where it is dominated by spontaneous emission and incoherence, to operation above threshold where stimulated emission dominates, passage time statistics can be used to quantify the simultaneous coexistence of coherence and incoherence that leads to spontaneous switching of lasing modes. With the recent exploration of chimera states in networks of coupled oscillators has emerged the possibility of noise initiated switching between two sub-chimeras. We will describe simulations that revealed power-law switching between the sub-chimeras and led to experiments on coupled opto-electronic oscillators to measure passage time statistics for switching chimeras.