  Arrays of coupled semiconductor lasers are systems possessing complex
dynamical behavior that are of major interest in photonics and laser science.
Dynamical instabilities, arising from supermode competition and slow carrier
dynamics, are known to prevent stable phase locking in a wide range of
parameter space, requiring special methods to realize stable laser operation.
Inspired by recent concepts of parity-time ($\mathcal{PT}$) and non-Hermitian
photonics, in this work we consider non-Hermitian coupling engineering in laser
arrays in a ring geometry and show, both analytically and numerically, that
non-Hermitian coupling can help to mitigate the onset of dynamical laser
instabilities. In particular, we consider in details two kinds of
nearest-neighbor non-Hermitian couplings: symmetric but complex mode coupling
(type-I non-Hermitian coupling) and asymmetric mode coupling (type-II
non-Hermitian coupling). Suppression of dynamical instabilities can be realized
in both coupling schemes, resulting in stable phase-locking laser emission with
the lasers emitting in phase (for type-I coupling) or with $\pi/2$ phase
gradient (for type-II coupling), resulting in a vortex far-field beam. In
type-II non-Hermitian coupling, chirality induced by asymmetric mode coupling
enables laser phase locking even in presence of moderate disorder in the
resonance frequencies of the lasers.
