Optical rogue waves in whispering-gallery-mode resonators

We report a theoretical study showing that rogue waves can emerge in whispering-gallery-mode resonators as the result of the chaotic interplay between Kerr nonlinearity and anomalous group-velocity dispersion. The nonlinear dynamics of the propagation of light in a whispering-gallery-mode resonator is investigated using the Lugiato-Lefever equation, and we give evidence of a range of parameters where rare and extreme events associated with non-Gaussian statistics of the field maxima are observed.