Near octave-spanning perfect soliton crystals in AlN microresonators

TL;DR

This paper reports the creation of broad, octave-spanning perfect soliton crystals in aluminum nitride microresonators with high repetition rates, enabling advanced applications in frequency combs and terahertz generation.

Contribution

It demonstrates deterministic access to versatile, broad-spectrum perfect soliton crystals in AlN microresonators with high coherence and terahertz repetition rates, expanding their practical utility.

Findings

Achieved octave-span (0.96) perfect soliton crystals in AlN microresonators.

Generated terahertz repetition rate soliton pulses up to ~1.87 THz.

Confirmed high coherence with 60-fs pulse duration and low noise.

Abstract

The perfect soliton crystal (PSC) was recently discovered as an extraordinary Kerr soliton state with regularly distributed soliton pulses and enhanced comb line power spaced by multiples of the cavity free spectral ranges (FSRs). The modulation of continuous-wave excitation in optical microresonators and the tunable repetition rate characteristic will significantly enhance and extend the application potential of soliton microcombs for self-referencing comb source, terahertz wave generation, and arbitrary waveform generation. However, the reported PSC spectrum is generally narrow. Here, we demonstrate the deterministic accessing of versatile perfect soliton crystals in the AlN microresonators (FSR ~374 GHz), featuring a broad spectral range up to 0.96 of an octave-span (1170-2300 nm) and terahertz repetition rates (up to ~1.87 THz). The measured 60-fs short pulses and low-noise characteristics confirms the high coherence of the PSCs