Cavity solitons in semiconductor devices

Cavity solitons appear as bright spots in the transverse intensity profile. They are similar to spatial solitons, but arise in dissipative systems. Here we consider a broad area vertical cavity resonator, driven by an external coherent field, at room temperature. The active material is constituted either by bulk GaAs, or by a Multiple Quantum Well GaAs/AlGaAs structure (MQW). A general model valid for both configurations is presented and a set of nonlinear dynamical equations is derived. The linear stability analysis of the homogeneous steady states is performed in a general form, holding for the two cases. Then, the nonlinear susceptibilities are specified: in the bulk case, we basically work in the free-carrier approximation, with some phenomenological corrections, such as the Urbach tail and the band-gap renormalization. For the bulk case, some numerical results concerning spatial pattern formation and cavity solitons are given. In the MQW case, on the contrary, we derive a full many-body theory, with the Coulomb enhancement treated in the Pade approximation.