Dark-Bright Soliton Bound States in a Microresonator

TL;DR

This paper reports the experimental observation and numerical simulation of bound states of dark-bright soliton pairs in a microresonator, revealing a novel mechanism for generating stable, constant-power light states with potential applications in telecommunications and ultrafast optics.

Contribution

It introduces the first observation of dark-bright soliton bound states in a microresonator, combining experimental and numerical analysis to uncover a new soliton generation mechanism.

Findings

Dark-bright soliton pairs are experimentally observed in a microresonator.

Numerical simulations confirm the experimental results and elucidate the generation mechanism.

The bound states produce constant output power with a spectral profile resembling a frequency comb.

Abstract

The recent discovery of dissipative Kerr solitons in microresonators has facilitated the development of fully coherent, chip-scale frequency combs. In addition, dark soliton pulses have been observed in microresonators in the normal dispersion regime. Here, we report bound states of mutually trapped dark-bright soliton pairs in a microresonator. The soliton pairs are generated seeding two modes with opposite dispersion but with similar group velocities. One laser operating in the anomalous dispersion regime generates a bright soliton microcomb, while the other laser in the normal dispersion regime creates a dark soliton via Kerr-induced cross-phase modulation with the bright soliton. Numerical simulations agree well with experimental results and reveal a novel mechanism to generate dark soliton pulses. The trapping of dark and bright solitons can lead to light states with the intriguing property of constant output power while spectrally resembling a frequency comb. These results can be of interest for telecommunication systems, frequency comb applications, ultrafast optics and soliton states in atomic physics.