Spatial soliton pixels in semiconductor devices

Semiconductor devices are the most appealing systems for information encoding using two-dimensional spatial solitons, recently reported both theoretically and experimentally in model systems. We show that stable solitons can be realized and controlled, both in passive microresonators with excitonic nonlinearity and in below-threshold vertical-cavity lasers. The solitons are robust enough to withstand significant carrier diffusion and self-defocusing, which is very encouraging for device applications.