Coupled lasers offer a promising approach to scaling the power output of photonic devices for applications demanding high frequency precision and beam coherence. However, maintaining coherence among lasers remains a fundamental challenge due to desynchronizing instabilities arising from time delay in the optical coupling. Here, we depart from the conventional notion that disorder is detrimental to synchronization and instead propose an interpretable mechanism through which heterogeneity in the laser parameters can be harnessed to promote synchronization. Our approach allows for stabilization of prespecified synchronous states that, while abundant, are often unstable in systems of identical lasers. The results show that stable synchronization enabling coherence can be frequently achieved by introducing intermediate levels of random mismatches in any of several laser constructive parameters. Our results establish a principled framework for enhancing coherence in large laser networks, offering a robust strategy for power scaling in photonic systems.

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• Collective behavior in networks
• Dynamics of networks
• Network stability
• Synchronization transition
• Lasers