Influence of the Talbot cavity selectivity on the evolution of collective operation of diffraction-coupled laser arrays

A dynamic model is proposed for collective operation of an array of diffraction-coupled waveguide lasers in an external cavity. The selective properties of a Talbot cavity predicted by this model match experimental results. A study is made of the transient process of evolution of collective lasing in one-dimensional and two-dimensional arrays. A statistical sampling method is used to show that the probability of establishing phase-locked operation as a result of this transient process is close to unity when the gain is low, but the probability falls on increase in the gain.