Zero dispersion Kerr solitons in optical microresonators

Miles H. Anderson, Wenle Weng, Grigory Lihachev, Alexey Tikan, Junqiu Liu and Tobias J. Kippenberg ()
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Miles H. Anderson: Institute of Physics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL)
Wenle Weng: Institute of Physics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL)
Grigory Lihachev: Institute of Physics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL)
Alexey Tikan: Institute of Physics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL)
Junqiu Liu: Institute of Physics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL)
Tobias J. Kippenberg: Institute of Physics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL)

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Solitons are shape preserving waveforms that are ubiquitous across nonlinear dynamical systems from BEC to hydrodynamics, and fall into two separate classes: bright solitons existing in anomalous group velocity dispersion, and switching waves forming ‘dark solitons’ in normal dispersion. Bright solitons in particular have been relevant to chip-scale microresonator frequency combs, used in applications across communications, metrology, and spectroscopy. Both have been studied, yet the existence of a structure between this dichotomy has only been theoretically predicted. We report the observation of dissipative structures embodying a hybrid between switching waves and dissipative solitons, existing in the regime of vanishing group velocity dispersion where third-order dispersion is dominant, hence termed as ‘zero-dispersion solitons’. They are observed to arise from the interlocking of two modulated switching waves, forming a stable solitary structure consisting of a quantized number of peaks. The switching waves form directly via synchronous pulse-driving of a Si3N4 microresonator. The resulting comb spectrum spans 136 THz or 97% of an octave, further enhanced by higher-order dispersive wave formation. This dissipative structure expands the domain of Kerr cavity physics to the regime near to zero-dispersion and could present a superior alternative to conventional solitons for broadband comb generation.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31916-x

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