Roadmap: Emerging Platforms and Applications of Optical Frequency Combs and Dissipative Solitons

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive roadmap of emerging platforms and applications of optical frequency combs and dissipative solitons, highlighting recent advances, challenges, and future research directions across multiple disciplines.

Contribution

It offers a multidisciplinary overview of the current state and future prospects of OFC technology, integrating physics, engineering, and training to guide development.

Findings

Advances in soliton science related to OFCs

Extension of OFC spectra into visible and mid-infrared ranges

Metrology applications and noise performance improvements

Abstract

The discovery of optical frequency combs (OFCs) has revolutionised science and technology by bridging electronics and photonics, driving major advances in precision measurements, atomic clocks, spectroscopy, telecommunications, and astronomy. However, current OFC systems still require further development to enable broader adoption in fields such as communication, aerospace, defence, and healthcare. There is a growing need for compact, portable OFCs that deliver high output power, robust self-referencing, and application-specific spectral coverage. On the conceptual side, progress toward such systems is hindered by an incomplete understanding of the fundamental principles governing OFC generation in emerging devices and materials, as well as evolving insights into the interplay between soliton and mode-locking effects. This roadmap presents the vision of a diverse group of academic and industry researchers and educators from Europe, along with their collaborators, on the current status and future directions of OFC science. It highlights a multidisciplinary approach that integrates novel physics, engineering innovation, and advanced researcher training. Topics include advances in soliton science as it relates to OFCs, the extension of OFC spectra into the visible and mid-infrared ranges, metrology applications and noise performance of integrated OFC sources, new fibre-based OFC modules, OFC lasers and OFC applications in astronomy.