Temporal Solitons in Microresonators driven by Optical Pulses

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the generation of stable femtosecond dissipative cavity solitons in microresonators driven by optical pulses, enabling efficient, all-optical control of frequency combs and advancing nonlinear photonics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel pulsed driving scheme for microresonators that produces stable solitons with high efficiency and control, bridging resonant and non-resonant nonlinear optics.

Findings

Stable femtosecond solitons generated with pico-second pulses

All-optical control of soliton repetition rate and carrier-envelope offset

Broadband frequency combs at ultra-low pulse energies

Abstract

Continuous-wave laser driven Kerr-nonlinear, optical microresonators have enabled a variety of novel applications and phenomena including the generation of optical frequency combs, ultra-low noise microwaves, as well as, ultra-short optical pulses. In this work we break with the paradigm of the continuous-wave optical drive and use instead periodic, pico-second optical pulses. We observe the deterministic generation of stable femtosecond dissipative cavity solitons on-top of the resonantly enhanced driving pulse. Surprisingly, the soliton pulse locks to the driving pulse enabling direct all-optical control of both the soliton's repetition rate and carrier-envelope offset frequency without the need for any actuation on the microresonator. When compared to both continuous-wave driven microresonators and non-resonant pulsed supercontinuum generation, this new approach is substantially more efficient and can yield broadband frequency combs at femto-Joule driving pulse energies and average laser powers significantly below the parametric threshold power of continuous-wave driven microresonators. The presented results bridge the fields of continuous-wave driven resonant and pulse-driven non-resonant nonlinear optics. They enables micro-photonic pulse compression, ultra-efficient low noise frequency comb and resonant supercontinuum generation for applications including optical data transfer and optical spectroscopy. From a scientific perspective the results open a new horizon for nonlinear photonics driven by temporally and spectrally structured light.