We review our recent work leading to steady-state solutions of the semiclassical (Maxwell-Bloch) equations of a laser. These are coupled nonlinear partial differential equations in space and time which have previously been solved either by fully time-dependent numerical simulations or by using major approximations which neglect nonlinear modal interactions and/or the openness of the laser system. We have found a time-independent technique for determining these stationary solutions which can treat lasers of arbitrary complexity and degree of openness. Our method has been shown to agree with time-dependent numerical solutions to high accuracy and has been applied to find the electric field patterns (lasing modes) of random lasers, which lack a laser cavity and are so strongly damped that the linear system has no detectable resonances. Our work provides a link between an important nonlinear wave system and the field of quantum/wave chaos in linear systems.
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