Thermal instabilities, frequency comb formation, and temporal oscillations in Kerr microresonators

TL;DR

This paper investigates how dissipative heating affects Kerr microresonators, revealing thermal instabilities that hinder frequency comb formation and proposing methods to bypass these barriers, including a new thermooptical oscillation phenomenon.

Contribution

It introduces a thermal Lugiato-Lefever model to analyze thermal effects and proposes a deterministic approach to access broadband frequency combs despite thermal instabilities.

Findings

Thermal sensitivity limits the stability of continuous wave states.

A new thermal instability causes thermooptical oscillations via Hopf bifurcation.

A deterministic method can bypass thermal instability barriers.

Abstract

We analyze the consequences of dissipative heating in driven Kerr microresonators theoretically and numerically, using a thermal Lugiato-Lefever model. We show that thermal sensitivity modifies the stability range of continuous wave in a way that blocks direct access to broadband frequency-comb forming waveforms, and we propose a deterministic access path that bypasses the thermal instability barrier. We describe a novel thermal instability that leads to thermooptical oscillations via a Hopf bifurcation.