Discrete time crystals and heteroclinic switching in actively mode-locked semiconductor lasers

@misc{koch2026discrete,
  title = {{Discrete time crystals and heteroclinic switching in actively mode-locked semiconductor lasers}},
  author = {Elias R. Koch and Albert Gallemí and Clàudia López and Finn Petersen and Julien Javaloyes and Svetlana V. Gurevich},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.09841},
  eprint = {2611.09841},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.09841},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Discrete time crystals and heteroclinic switching in actively mode-locked semiconductor lasers
AU  - Elias R. Koch
AU  - Albert Gallemí
AU  - Clàudia López
AU  - Finn Petersen
AU  - Julien Javaloyes
AU  - Svetlana V. Gurevich
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/11/06
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.09841
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.09841
AB  - We investigate the mechanisms underlying the emergence of discrete time crystals in actively mode-locked semiconductor lasers. Our analysis is based on a Haus master equation generalized to retain carrier memory between round-trips. We perform a detailed bifurcation analysis that reveals a well-defined hierarchy of subharmonic states, illustrating how pulses may suppress their neighbors when the modulation runs faster than the pulse round-trip frequency. To identify the underlying mechanism, we derive effective equations of motion that couple the pulse energies, their positions relative to the modulation transmission maxima, and the local time-dependent gain. These reveal that transitions between time-crystalline states occur via transcritical global bifurcations, opening a regime of heteroclinic winnerless competition between symmetry-degenerate configurations.
ER  -