Suppressing spatiotemporal lasing instabilities with wave-chaotic microcavities

Taming laser instabilities Broad-area and high-power lasers often suffer from instabilities owing to the chaotic interference of multiple modes within the cavity. Such instabilities can ultimately limit the operation of the laser or damage the cavity. The usual approach to minimizing such instabilities is to limit the number of modes in the cavity. Bittner et al. designed a chaotic cavity that disrupts the formation of self-organized structures that lead to instabilities (see the Perspective by Yang). This approach of fighting chaos with chaos by using the boundary condition of the cavity shape may provide a robust route to stabilizing lasers at high operating powers. Science , this issue p. 1225 ; see also p. 1201