Observation of gain-pinned dissipative solitons in a microcavity laser

We demonstrate an experimental approach for creating spatially localized states in a semiconductor microcavity laser. In particular, we shape the spatial gain profile of a quasi-one-dimensional microcavity laser with a nonresonant, pulsed optical pump to create spatially localized structures, known as gain-pinned dissipative solitons, that exist due to the balance of gain and nonlinear losses. We directly probe the ultrafast formation dynamics and decay of these localized structures, showing that they are created on a picosecond timescale, orders of magnitude faster than laser cavity solitons. All of the experimentally observed features and dynamics are reconstructed by numerical modeling using a complex Ginzburg–Landau model, which explicitly takes into account the carrier density dynamics in the semiconductor.