Spontaneous symmetry breaking and trapping of temporal Kerr cavity solitons by pulsed or amplitude modulated driving fields

TL;DR

This paper investigates how temporal Kerr cavity solitons behave under pulsed or amplitude modulated driving fields, revealing a new symmetry-breaking phenomenon that influences their trapping positions based on cavity detuning.

Contribution

It uncovers a novel spontaneous symmetry breaking mechanism affecting soliton trapping in Kerr cavities with pulsed or amplitude modulated drives, differing from phase modulation effects.

Findings

Solitons are attracted to specific driving field values depending on cavity detuning.

A spontaneous symmetry breaking instability explains the soliton dynamics.

New behavior of Kerr cavity solitons under amplitude modulated driving fields.

Abstract

We report on a systematic study of temporal Kerr cavity soliton dynamics in the presence of pulsed or amplitude modulated driving fields. In stark contrast to the more extensively studied case of phase modulations, we find that Kerr cavity solitons are not always attracted to maxima or minima of driving field amplitude inhomogeneities. Instead, we find that the solitons are attracted to temporal positions associated with specific driving field values that depend only on the cavity detuning. We describe our findings in light of a spontaneous symmetry breaking instability that physically ensues from a competition between coherent driving and nonlinear propagation effects. In addition to identifying a new type of Kerr cavity soliton behaviour, our results provide valuable insights to practical cavity configurations employing pulsed or amplitude modulated driving fields.