  Topologically protected defects have been observed and studied in a wide
range of fields, such as cosmology, spin systems, cold atoms and optics as they
are quenched across a phase transition into an ordered state. Revealing their
origin and control is becoming increasingly important field of research, as
they limit the coherence of the system and its ability to approach a fully
ordered state. Here, we present dissipative topological defects in a 1-D ring
network of phase-locked lasers, and show how their formation is related to the
Kibble-Zurek mechanism and is governed in a universal manner by two competing
time scales of the lasers, namely the phase locking time and synchronization
time of their amplitude fluctuations. The ratio between these two time scales
depends on the system parameters such as gain and coupling strength, and thus
offers the possibility to control the probability of topological defects in the
system. Enabling the system to dissipate to the fully ordered, defect-free
state can be exploited for solving hard combinatorial optimization problems in
various fields. As opposed to unitary systems where quenching is obtained via
external cooling mostly through the edges, our dissipative system is kept
strictly uniform even for fast quenches.
