Ultrafast modelocked nonlinear micro-cavity laser

TL;DR

This paper introduces the first mode-locked laser using a CMOS-compatible micro-ring resonator, achieving ultrahigh repetition rates and narrow spectral linewidths through a novel Filter-Driven Four-Wave-Mixing mode-locking method.

Contribution

It presents a new mode-locking technique and demonstrates a micro-cavity laser with high stability, ultrahigh repetition rates, and narrow linewidths, advancing integrated photonics.

Findings

Achieved stable self-starting mode-locking in a micro-cavity laser.

Demonstrated ultrahigh repetition rates with negligible amplitude noise.

Spectral linewidths below 130 kHz.

Abstract

Ultrashort pulsed lasers, operating through the phenomenon of mode-locking, have played a significant role in many facets of our society for 50 years, for example in the way we exchange information, measure and diagnose diseases, process materials and in many other applications. The ability to phase-lock the modes of the high-quality resonators recently exploited to demonstrate optical combs, would allow mode-locked lasers to benefit from their high optical spectral quality in order to realize novel sources such as precision optical clocks for applications to metrology, telecommunications, microchip-computing, and many other areas. We demonstrate the first mode-locked laser based on a micro-cavity resonator. It operates via a new mode-locking method we termed Filter-Driven (FD) Four-Wave-Mixing, and is based on a CMOS-compatible high quality factor micro-ring resonator. It achieves stable self-starting oscillation with negligible amplitude noise at ultrahigh repetition rates, and spectral linewidths well below 130 kHz.