Dissipative polarization domain walls in a passive driven Kerr resonator

TL;DR

This paper reports the experimental creation and control of dissipative polarization domain walls in a passive driven Kerr resonator, demonstrating their stability, on-demand excitation, and potential for optical information processing.

Contribution

First experimental realization of dissipative polarization domain walls in a passive driven Kerr resonator with controllable excitation and pinning.

Findings

Domain walls arise via symmetry breaking bifurcation.

Domain walls can be pinned and persist indefinitely.

Potential applications in all-optical buffers and topological bit transmission.

Abstract

Using a passive driven nonlinear optical fiber ring resonator, we report the experimental realization of dissipative polarization domain walls. The domain walls arise through a symmetry breaking bifurcation and consist of temporally localized structures where the amplitudes of the two polarization modes of the resonator interchange, segregating domains of orthogonal polarization states. We show that dissipative polarization domain walls can persist in the resonator without changing shape. We also demonstrate on-demand excitation, as well as pinning of domain walls at specific positions for arbitrary long times. Our results could prove useful for the analog simulation of ubiquitous domain-wall related phenomena, and pave the way to an all-optical buffer adapted to the transmission of topological bits.