Figure 1

Experimental arrangement for measuring the combined output power distribution of 25 coupled fiber lasers. FBG, fiber Bragg gratings that serve as rear mirror ($>99\%$ reflectivity) and front mirrors ($\sim 5\%$ reflectivity); $E^{\left(i\right)}$, the complex electric field in the $i$th fiber near the rear FBG for each fiber laser; $l_i$, the length of the $i$th fiber. $M_{i,j}$ corresponds to the propagation matrix for a single round trip in the cavity and includes the propagation in each fiber, the output coupler ($\sim 2\%$ reflectivity), and the coupling between the different fibers ($\sim 8\%$ coupling). The light emerging from all the fiber lasers was collected with a lens that was focused onto a detector to obtain the combined output power. Details about the experimental configuration, coupling arrangement, and connectivity manipulations were presented in previous work [15].Reuse & Permissions

Figure 2

Representative experimental results of the combined output power from the 25 fiber lasers as a function of time. Solid curve (red) - without coupling between the lasers; Dashed curve (blue) - with coupling between the lasers. These results indicate that the fluctuations are caused by the coupling between the lasers.Reuse & Permissions

Figure 3

Probability distribution of the scaled combined output power. Circles, experimental results in a one-dimensional connectivity; asterisks, experimental results in a two-dimensional connectivity; solid curve, Tracy-Widom (TW) distribution. As seen, there is a very good agreement between the probability distributions of the experimentally measured results and the TW distribution in linear scale for both connectivities. For closer inspection of the fit to the tails of the distribution see Fig. 4.Reuse & Permissions

Figure 4

Probability distribution of the scaled combined output power for (a) one-dimensional connectivity (circles), and (b) two-dimensional connectivity (asterisks) in logarithmic scale. Solid curves, Tracy-Widom (TW) distribution; dashed curves, Majumdar-Vergassola (MV) distribution for eigenvalues much larger (right green) and Pierpaolo, Majumdar, and Bohigas (PMB) distribution for eigenvalues much smaller (left blue) than the mean, with no fitting parameters. As seen, at the tails of the measured distribution there are significant systematic deviations from the TW distribution. However, there is a very good agreement for both connectivities, between the measured results and the MV and PMB distributions at values which are much larger and much smaller from the mean value, respectively. Insets illustrate the connectivities between the 25 fiber lasers in each case [15].Reuse & Permissions