Zero dispersion Kerr solitons in optical microresonators
Abstract
Solitons are shape preserving waveforms that are ubiquitous across nonlinear dynamical systems from BEC to hydrodynamics, and fall into two separate classes: bright solitons existing in anomalous group velocity dispersion, and switching waves forming ‘dark solitons’ in normal dispersion. Bright solitons in particular have been relevant to chip-scale microresonator frequency combs, used in applications across communications, metrology, and spectroscopy. Both have been studied, yet the existence of a structure between this dichotomy has only been theoretically predicted. We report the observation of dissipative structures embodying a hybrid between switching waves and dissipative solitons, existing in the regime of vanishing group velocity dispersion where third-order dispersion is dominant, hence termed as ‘zero-dispersion solitons’. They are observed to arise from the interlocking of two modulated switching waves, forming a stable solitary structure consisting of a quantized number of peaks. The switching waves form directly via synchronous pulse-driving of a Si3N4microresonator. The resulting comb spectrum spans 136 THz or 97% of an octave, further enhanced by higher-order dispersive wave formation. This dissipative structure expands the domain of Kerr cavity physics to the regime near to zero-dispersion and could present a superior alternative to conventional solitons for broadband comb generation.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Aug 13, 2022
- Source ID
- 10.1038/s41467-022-31916-x
Entities
People
- Alexey Tikan
- Grigory Lihachev
- Junqiu Liu
- Miles Anderson
- Tobias Kippenberg
- Wenle Weng
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- United States Department of Defense