Self-sustained microcomb lasing in an integrated hybrid oscillator

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a fully integrated, self-sustained microcomb laser on a chip, combining a microresonator and a reflective amplifier to achieve stable, narrow-linewidth combs without external lasers or feedback.

Contribution

It introduces a minimalist on-chip hybrid cavity that enables self-sustained microcomb generation solely through co-oscillation of lasing and Kerr effects, eliminating external driving.

Findings

Achieved stable microcomb with linewidth below 1 kHz.

Demonstrated operation exceeding 24 hours without active feedback.

Realized a fully integrated, scalable microcomb source.

Abstract

Microcavity optical frequency combs (microcombs) are compact, coherent light sources whose chip-scale integrability is poised to drive advances in metrology, communications, and sensing. Among available microcomb generation methods, hybrid cavities uniquely co-locate gain and Kerr dynamics, where the lasing mode directly resonates in the nonlinear microcavity, simultaneously enabling self-sustained and highly efficient microcomb generation. However, their implementation is often limited by partial integration or the need for external injection, which complicates operation architecture, raises power and hampers system miniaturization. In this work, we present a fully integrated hybrid cavity for self-sustained microcomb generation, relying solely on the co-oscillation of lasing and Kerr nonlinearity without external driving. The system collapses the pump laser, nonlinear resonator and feedback loops into a minimalist on-chip two-element cavity, consisting of a high-Q microresonator with engineered intracavity reflection and a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA). The scheme delivers self-starting operation and stable performance without active feedback. The generated coherent microcomb achieves intrinsic linewidths below 1 kHz and integrated linewidths around 100 kHz, with self-sustained operation exceeding 24 hours. This ultra-compact architecture provides a practical path toward scalable, coherent multi-wavelength sources for integrated photonic systems.