| 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. |
