Experimental evidence of stochastic resonance in vertical cavity surface emitting lasers

Summary form only given. The phenomenon known as stochastic resonance (SR) has been the subject of intensive investigations during the past ten years. The term describes a particular behaviour of the response of a bistable system, when a weak coherent signal is superimposed to stochastic fluctuations in input. One commonly expects that an increase of the noise level leads to a deterioration of the performance. In such systems however the noise can induce synchronized jumps between the two stable states. Hence, the response of the bistable system shows a resonance-like behavior versus the input noise-level, which is the main signature of SR. We report a full account of the observation of SR in the polarized emission of a pump modulated vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs).