Simulating XY spins with coupled lasers

Nir Davidson

Dept. of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

We investigate phase locking of large arrays of coupled lasers in a modified degenerate cavity (MDC). We show that the minimal loss lasing solution is mapped to the ground state of an XY spin Hamiltonian with the same coupling matrix provided the intensity of all the lasers is uniform. We study the probability to obtain this ground state for various coupling schemes, system parameters and topological constrains. We demonstrate the effect of crowd synchrony with a sharp transition into an ordered state above a critical number of coupled lasers. Finally, we present recent results demonstrating the ability of our system to solve related problems such as phase retrieval, imaging through scattering medium and more.