Spatial-mode-interaction-induced dispersive-waves and their active tuning in microresonators

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how spatial mode interactions and soliton self-frequency shifts in microresonators can actively generate and tune dispersive waves, offering new spectral control methods for optical applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to generate and actively tune dispersive waves in microcavities using spatial mode interactions and soliton frequency shifts, expanding control over these waves.

Findings

Dispersive waves can be induced by spatial mode interactions in microcavities.

Soliton self-frequency shift enables fine spectral tuning of dispersive waves.

New methods for spectral control of dispersive waves in microresonators are demonstrated.

Abstract

The nonlinear propagation of optical pulses in dielectric waveguides and resonators provides a laboratory to investigate a wide range of remarkable interactions. Many of the resulting phenomena find applications in optical systems. One example is dispersive wave generation, the optical analog of Cherenkov radiation. These waves have an essential role in fiber spectral broadeners that are routinely used in spectrocopy and metrology. Dispersive waves form when a soliton pulse begins to radiate power as a result of higher-order dispersion. Recently, dispersive wave generation in microcavities has been reported by phase matching the waves to dissipative Kerr cavity (DKC) solitons. Here, it is shown that spatial mode interactions within a microcavity can also be used to induce dispersive waves. These interactions are normally avoided altogether in DKC soliton generation. The soliton self frequency shift is also shown to induce fine tuning control of the dispersive wave frequency. Both this mechanism and spatial mode interactions provide a new method to spectrally control these important waves.