Quadratic-soliton-enhanced mid-IR molecular sensing

Robert M. Gray (), Mingchen Liu, Selina Zhou, Arkadev Roy, Luis Ledezma and Alireza Marandi ()
Additional contact information
Robert M. Gray: California Institute of Technology
Mingchen Liu: California Institute of Technology
Selina Zhou: California Institute of Technology
Arkadev Roy: California Institute of Technology
Luis Ledezma: California Institute of Technology
Alireza Marandi: California Institute of Technology

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Optical solitons have long been of interest both from a fundamental perspective and because of their application potential. Both cubic (Kerr) and quadratic nonlinearities can lead to soliton formation, but quadratic solitons can practically benefit from stronger nonlinearity and achieve substantial wavelength conversion. However, despite their rich physics, quadratic cavity solitons have been used only for broadband frequency comb generation, especially in the mid-infrared. Here, we show that the formation dynamics of mid-infrared quadratic cavity solitons, specifically temporal simultons in optical parametric oscillators, can be effectively leveraged to enhance molecular sensing. We demonstrate significant sensitivity enhancement while circumventing constraints of traditional cavity enhancement mechanisms. We perform experiments sensing CO2 using cavity simultons around 4 μm and achieve an enhancement of 6000. Additionally, we demonstrate large sensitivity at high concentrations of CO2, beyond what can be achieved using an equivalent high-finesse linear cavity by orders of magnitude. Our results highlight a path for utilizing quadratic cavity nonlinear dynamics and solitons for molecular sensing beyond what can be achieved using linear methods.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53447-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-53447-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-53447-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().