Novel Steady-State Light-Matter Phase: Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking via Formation of an Asymmetric Nonlinear Self-Consistent Grating in a Low-Q CW Superradiant Laser with Symmetric Fabry-Perot Cavity

Numerical analysis of the Maxwell-Bloch equations for a low-Q CW superradiant laser with symmetric Fabry-Perot cavity shows that a strong pumping leads to spontaneous formation of a highly asymmetric half-wavelength grating of polarization and population inversion of active centers which results in a self-consistent generation of counter-propagating waves with different spatial profiles and outgoing intensities.