Octave-spanning, deterministic single soliton generation in 4H-silicon carbide-on-insulator microring resonators

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the deterministic generation of octave-spanning, single soliton microcombs in silicon carbide microring resonators with low power, leveraging dispersion management and high Q factors.

Contribution

It introduces a dispersion-engineered SiCOI microring design enabling reliable, low-power, octave-spanning soliton microcombs for chip-scale frequency combs.

Findings

Achieved single soliton comb spanning beyond an octave.

Demonstrated low threshold Kerr comb generation at 60 mW.

Resonators with Q up to 5.8 million.

Abstract

The miniaturization of self-referencing frequency comb systems enables emerging applications in metrology and spectroscopy. One major challenge in realizing the chip-scale self-referencing function is to generate octave-spanning soliton microcombs with low operation power. Accessing soliton states is also not trivial due to the thermal effect. Though an auxiliary laser was utilized to compensate for the thermal effect, deterministic single soliton generation is still elusive, especially for broadband operation. In this work, dispersion management is performed for a 4H-silicon carbide-on-insulator (SiCOI) multi-mode microring resonator, benefiting from the submicron-confinement waveguide layout. The fundamental transverse electric (TE) mode is engineered to anomalous dispersion for two dispersive waves generation over an octave span. While a higher order TE mode is engineered to normal dispersion to accommodate the auxiliary light for thermal compensation. The normal dispersion prevents modulation-instability Kerr comb generation, allowing for a large soliton existence range. We achieve microring resonators with Q up to 5.8 million and sub-milli-watt-threshold Kerr comb generation. Combining the dispersion-managed design and high Q device, we demonstrate the deterministic generation of a single soliton comb spanning beyond an octave with a low on-chip power of 60 mW. Our demonstration paves the way to realize chip-scale, turn-key, self-referenced frequency combs.