Vortex creation without stirring in coupled ring resonators with gain and loss

Abstract: We present study of the dynamics of two ring waveguide structure with space dependent coupling, linear gain and nonlinear absorption - the system that can be implemented in polariton condensates, optical waveguides, and nanocavities. We show that by turning on and off local coupling between rings one can selectively generate permanent vortex in one of the rings. We find that due to the modulation instability it is also possible to observe several complex nonlinear phenomena, including spontaneous symmetry breaking, stable inhomogeneous states with interesting structure of currents flowing between rings, generation of stable symmetric and asymmetric circular flows with various vorticities, etc. The latter can be created in pairs (for relatively narrow coupling length) or as single vortex in one of the channels, that is later alternating between channels.