Temporal Walk-off Induced Dissipative Quadratic Solitons

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the formation of dissipative quadratic solitons in optical resonators via non-stationary optical parametric amplification, achieving significant pulse compression at ultra-low energies, offering a promising alternative to Kerr solitons.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method for generating dissipative quadratic solitons using non-stationary optical parametric amplification with temporal walk-off, enabling ultra-low energy pulse compression.

Findings

Achieved pulse compression exceeding a factor of 40 at ~4 picojoules.

Formed bright quadratic solitons in a low-finesse cavity in both dispersion regimes.

Proposed extension to integrated platforms for highly-efficient, few-cycle pulse generation.

Abstract

A plethora of applications have recently motivated extensive efforts on the generation of low noise Kerr solitons and coherent frequency combs in various platforms ranging from fiber to whispering gallery and integrated microscale resonators. However, the Kerr (cubic) nonlinearity is inherently weak, and in contrast, strong quadratic nonlinearity in optical resonators is expected to provide an alternative means for soliton formation with promising potential. Here, we demonstrate the formation of a dissipative quadratic soliton via non-stationary optical parametric amplification in the presence of significant temporal walk-off between pump and signal leading to half-harmonic generation accompanied by a substantial pulse compression (exceeding a factor of 40) at low pump pulse energies ($\sim$ 4 picojoules). The bright quadratic soliton forms in a low-finesse cavity in both normal and anomalous dispersion regimes, which is in stark contrast with bright Kerr solitons. We present a route to significantly improve the performance of the demonstrated quadratic soliton when extended to an integrated nonlinear platform to realize highly-efficient extreme pulse compression leading to the formation of few-cycle soliton pulses starting from ultra-low energy picosecond scale pump pulses that are widely tunable from ultra-violet to mid-infrared spectral regimes.