Turnkey deterministic soliton crystal generation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a reliable, turnkey method for generating stable 'Palm-like' soliton crystals in microcombs, with high success rate, thermal robustness, and long-term stability, advancing practical applications of optical frequency combs.

Contribution

Introduces a novel free-running scheme for deterministic, high-success-rate generation of soliton crystals, improving robustness and stability over previous methods.

Findings

Nearly 100% success rate in soliton crystal generation

Insensitivity to thermal effects and environmental changes

Stable operation over four hours in laboratory conditions

Abstract

The deterministic generation of robust soliton comb has significant meaning for the optical frequency combs to be widely used in various applications. As a novel form of microcomb, Soliton crystal holds the advantages of easy generation, high conversion efficiency, and excellent thermal robustness. Here, we report the turnkey deterministic generation of "Palm-like" soliton crystal with a free-running scheme. The robustness of the turnkey soliton crystal generation is also investigated in multiple aspects, including the success rate, the thermal robustness, and the long-term stability. The experiment results reveal our turnkey soliton crystal can achieve nearly a 100% success rate with a power variation less than 1.5 dB over one hundred trials of two samples, is insensitive to thermal effect, and is robust to the environment during four-hour laboratory time.