All-Optical Azimuthal Trapping of Dissipative Kerr Multi-Solitons for Relative Noise Suppression

TL;DR

This paper introduces an all-optical trapping method to synchronize multiple dissipative Kerr solitons in microresonators, significantly reducing relative noise and enabling stable multi-soliton states for advanced metrology applications.

Contribution

The authors demonstrate Kerr-induced synchronization as an all-optical trapping technique to stabilize multi-DKS states, reducing noise and improving their suitability for practical applications.

Findings

Repetition rate noise becomes independent of soliton number.

Multi-DKS states can be stabilized to match single-DKS noise levels.

Experimental validation in integrated microresonators confirms theoretical predictions.

Abstract

Temporal cavity solitons, or dissipative Kerr solitons (DKS) in integrated microresonators, are essential for deployable metrology technologies. Such applications favor the lowest noise state, typically the single-DKS state where one soliton is in the resonator. Other multi-DKS states can also be reached, offering better conversion efficiency and thermal stability, potentially simplifying DKS-based technologies. Yet they exhibit more noise due to relative soliton jitter, and are usually not compatible with targeted applications. We demonstrate that Kerr-induced synchronization, an all-optical trapping technique, can azimuthally pin the multi-DKS state to a common reference field. This method ensures repetition rate noise independent of the number of solitons, making a multi-DKS state indistinguishable from a single-DKS state in that regard, akin to trapped-soliton molecule behavior. Supported by theoretical analysis and experimental demonstration in an integrated microresonator, this approach provides metrological capacity regardless of the number of cavity solitons, benefiting numerous DKS-based metrology applications.