Protected generation of dissipative Kerr solitons in supermodes of coupled optical microresonators

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how coupled high-Q microresonators can protect topological Kerr solitons from mode interactions, offering advantages over single resonator systems in generating stable dissipative solitons.

Contribution

It reveals the suppression of avoided mode crossings in supermodes of coupled resonators and demonstrates topological protection of Kerr solitons in a Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model.

Findings

Suppression of avoided mode crossings in supermodes.

Protection of topological edge states from mode interactions.

Enhanced control over dissipative Kerr soliton formation.

Abstract

The driven-dissipative photonic dimer comprised of two evanescently coupled high-Q microresonators is a fundamental element of multimode soliton lattices. It has demonstrated a variety of emergent nonlinear phenomena including supermode soliton generation, symmetry breaking, and soliton hopping. In this article, we present another aspect of dissipative soliton generation in coupled resonators, revealing the advantages of this system over conventional single resonator platforms. Namely, we show that the accessibility of solitons drastically varies for symmetric and antisymmetric supermode families of the dimer. Linear measurements reveal that the coupling between transverse modes, which gives rise to avoided mode crossings, can be almost completely suppressed. We explain the origin of this phenomenon and show its crucial influence on the dissipative Kerr soliton formation process in lattices of coupled high-Q resonators of any type. Choosing a particular example of the topological Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, we demonstrate how the edge state can be protected from the interaction with higher-order modes, allowing for the formation of topological Kerr solitons.