Cavity soliton billiards

The motion of a self-propelled cavity soliton in a laser where the pump profile acts as a square billiard is investigated. In the long-term dynamics, only closed trajectories are possible, exhibiting nonspecular reflections with striking similarities to walking droplets in a vibrated liquid bath. Open orbits can be achieved either by introducing scattering defects in the pump profile or in the presence of more than two solitons, due to their interaction. Such dynamical properties can be exploited for applications such as a compact soliton-force microscope.