Noise-mediated Casimir-like pulse interaction mechanism in lasers

Strongly pumped mode-locked lasers often form pulse bunches. Although several mechanisms of pulse interaction are known, none yields the experimentally observed long-range attraction. Here we demonstrate theoretically and experimentally a new pulse interaction mechanism mediated by the continuum noise floor that is a universal feature in multipulse passively mode-locked lasers. Long-range attraction is facilitated by the depletion of the gain by the pulses, leading to an inhomogeneous noise floor that biases the timing jitter of the pulses and produces an effective interpulse potential with stable pulse bunch configurations. The pulses attract by suppressing electromagnetic fluctuations, as do conductors in the Casimir effect of quantum electrodynamics. This enables manipulation and design of multipulse waveforms to ultimately make them useful for application of mode-locked lasers. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America