Topological Anderson Random Laser

Physics > Optics [Submitted on 22 Mar 2026] Topological Anderson Random Laser Hang-Zheng Shen, Xian-Hao Wei, Xi-Wang Luo, Zheng-Wei Zhou Topological lasers and random lasers embody two contrasting strategies for disorder management in photonics: the former suppresses disorder via protected edge transport, while the latter exploits multiple scattering for feedback. Here, we theoretically demonstrate that these seemingly incompatible paradigms can be unified through a topological Anderson random laser (TARL), where disorder itself induces a topological phase that enables robust lasing. Starting from a trivial photonic lattice, we show that engineered disorder drives the system into a topological Anderson insulator regime, generating emergent chiral edge states that serve as boundary-selective lasing channels. Remarkably, the TARL exhibits rapid mode selection toward a single edge state, producing an ultranarrow emission spectrum and enhanced slope efficiency optimized near disorder strength with maximal topological mobility gap. Furthermore, they exhibit single-mode-like coherence properties, deviating from Kardar-Parisi-Zhang behavior in conventional chiral topological lasers, while remaining significantly more robust against local perturbations than conventional random lasers. Our findings establish a disorder-enabled flexible route to topologically protected single-mode lasing and introduce a fundamentally new design principle for robust, high-coherence photonic light sources. Comments: 7 pages, 6 figures, with 5 page supplementary information Subjects: Optics (physics.optics); Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2604.02364 [physics.optics]   (or arXiv:2604.02364v1 [physics.optics] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.02364 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Xi-Wang Luo [view email] [v1] Sun, 22 Mar 2026 15:12:45 UTC (1,126 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: physics.optics < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: physics quant-ph References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)