Discovery of dissipative microwave photonic solitons

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of dissipative microwave photonic solitons that enable wideband tunable frequency hopping microwave signals with rapid switching, achieved through a balance of nonlinear gain, filtering, and gain-loss in a resonant cavity.

Contribution

It introduces a novel type of dissipative solitons in microwave photonics and demonstrates their ability to generate tunable, wideband microwave signals with fast frequency switching.

Findings

Observation of dissipative solitons with variable pulse widths and repetition rates

Generation of wideband tunable frequency hopping microwave signals

Potential applications in radar, electronic warfare, and telecommunications

Abstract

Dissipative solitons rely on the double balance between nonlinearity and dispersion as well as gain and loss have attracted a lot of attention in optics, since it gives rise to ultrashort pulses and broadband frequency combs with good stability and smooth spectral envelopes. Here we observe a novel dissipative solitons in microwave photonics that gives rise to wideband tunable frequency hopping microwave signals with fast frequency switching speed. The dissipative microwave photonic solitions are achieved through the double balance between nonlinear gain saturation and linear filtering as well as gain and loss in a microwave photonic resonant cavity. The generation of dissipative solitons with different pulse width, repletion rate and number of solitons per round-trip time are observed, together with the corresponding wideband tunable frequency hopping microwave signals. This work opens new avenues for signal generation, processing and control based on the principle of solitons in microwave photonics, and has great potential in many applications such as modern radars, electronic warfare systems, and telecommunications.