Stokes Soliton in Optical Microcavities

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a new type of optical soliton, the Stokes soliton, which forms and regenerates through optimized Raman interactions in microcavities, expanding the understanding of soliton dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces the Stokes soliton in optical microcavities, a novel soliton type formed via Raman interactions and soliton trapping, not previously observed in such systems.

Findings

Stokes soliton forms and regenerates in microcavities.

Stokes and initial solitons belong to different mode families.

The phenomenon introduces new possibilities for photonics applications.

Abstract

Solitons are wavepackets that resist dispersion through a self-induced potential well. They are studied in many fields, but are especially well known in optics on account of the relative ease of their formation and control in optical fiber waveguides. Besides their many interesting properties, solitons are important to optical continuum generation, in mode-locked lasers and have been considered as a natural way to convey data over great distances. Recently, solitons have been realized in microcavities thereby bringing the power of microfabrication methods to future applications. This work reports a soliton not previously observed in optical systems, the Stokes soliton. The Stokes soliton forms and regenerates by optimizing its Raman interaction in space and time within an optical-potential well shared with another soliton. The Stokes and the initial soliton belong to distinct transverse mode families and benefit from a form of soliton trapping that is new to microcavities and soliton lasers in general. The discovery of a new optical soliton can impact work in other areas of photonics including nonlinear optics and spectroscopy.