Strongly interacting solitons confined to an optical resonator would offer unique capabilities for experiments in communication, computation, and sensing with light. Here we report on the discovery of soliton crystals in monolithic Kerr microresonators-spontaneously and collectively ordered ensembles of co-propagating solitons whose interactions discretize their allowed temporal separations. We unambiguously identify and characterize soliton crystals through analysis of their 'fingerprint' optical spectra, which arise from spectral interference between the solitons. We identify a rich space of soliton crystals exhibiting crystallographic defects, and time-domain measurements directly confirm our inference of their crystal structure. The crystallization we observe is explained by long-range soliton interactions mediated by resonator mode degeneracies, and we probe the qualitative difference between soliton crystals and a soliton liquid that forms in the absence of these interactions. Our work explores the rich physics of monolithic Kerr resonators in a new regime of dense soliton occupation and offers a way to greatly increase the efficiency of Kerr combs; further, the extreme degeneracy of the configuration space of soliton crystals suggests an implementation for a robust on-chip optical buffer.Optical solitons have recently found a new realization in frequency combs generated in passive, monolithic Kerrnonlinear resonators 1 (microcombs). These microcombs are a major step forward in frequency-comb technology 2 because they enable generation of combs in platforms having low size, weight, and power requirements. When a continuous-wave pump laser is coupled into a whispering-gallery mode of a high-Q Kerr resonator, broad optical spectra are generated through cascaded four-wave mixing. With appropriate power and laser-resonator frequency detuning, the resulting fields modelock to form circulating dissipative Kerr-cavity solitons [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] . These solitons are pulsed excitations atop a non-zero continuous wave background, and have robust deterministic properties that may be tailored through resonator design 11,12 and tuned in real-time through manipulation of the pump laser. Microcombs based on solitons extend the range of accessible comb repetition rates and provide a route towards chip-integrated self-referenced comb technology.Single solitons and ensembles of several co-propagating solitons have been reported in Kerr resonators constructed from a variety of crystalline and amorphous materials 3-7 , with repetition rates ranging from 22 GHz 6 to 1 THz 7 . Formally equivalent to monolithic Kerr resonators are lower repetition-rate fiber-loop resonators, where generation and control of soliton ensembles has recently been explored experimentally [13][14][15][16] . These experiments were preceded by theoretical studies of soliton interactions and ensembles of solitons in quasi-CW-pumped fiber-ring resonators [17][18][19] , where an analogy between soliton ensembles and the states of matter was introduc...

We demonstrate the generation of a supercontinuum spanning more than 1.4 octaves in a silicon nitride waveguide using sub-100-fs pulses at 1 μm generated by either a 53-MHz, diode-pumped ytterbium (Yb) fiber laser or a 1-GHz, Yb:CaAlGdO(4) (Yb:CALGO) laser. Our numerical simulations show that the broadband supercontinuum is fully coherent, and a spectral interference measurement is used to verify that the supercontinuum generated with the Yb:CALGO laser possesses a high degree of coherence over the majority of its spectral bandwidth. This coherent spectrum may be utilized for optical coherence tomography, spectroscopy, and frequency metrology.

Using aluminum-nitride photonic-chip waveguides, we generate optical-frequency-comb supercontinuum spanning from 500 nm to 4000 nm with a 0.8 nJ seed pulse, and show that the spectrum can be tailored by changing the waveguide geometry. Since aluminum nitride exhibits both quadratic and cubic nonlinearities, the spectra feature simultaneous contributions from numerous nonlinear mechanisms: supercontinuum generation, difference-frequency generation, second-harmonic generation, and third-harmonic generation. As one application of integrating multiple nonlinear processes, we measure and stabilize the carrier-envelope-offset frequency of a laser comb by direct photodetection of the output light. Additionally, we generate ∼0.3 mW of broadband light in the 3000 nm and 4000 nm spectral region, which is potentially useful for molecular spectroscopy. The combination of broadband light generation from the visible through the mid-infrared, combined with simplified self-referencing, provides a path towards robust comb systems for spectroscopy and metrology in the field.

Dissipative solitons formed in Kerr microresonators may enable chip-scale frequency combs for precision optical metrology. Here we explore the creation of an octave-spanning, 15-GHz repetition-rate microcomb suitable for both f -2f self-referencing and optical-frequency comparisons across the near infrared. This is achieved through a simple and reliable approach to deterministically generate, and subsequently frequency stabilize, soliton pulse trains in a silica-disk resonator. Efficient silicon-nitride waveguides provide a supercontinuum spanning 700 to 2100 nm, enabling both offset-frequency stabilization and optical-frequency measurements with >100 nW per mode. We demonstrate the stabilized comb by performing a microcomb-mediated comparison of two ultrastable optical-reference cavities.

We present a synchronously pumped fiber optical parametric oscillator for coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering microscopy. Pulses from a 1 μm Yb-doped fiber laser are amplified and frequency converted to 779–808 nm through normal dispersion four-wave mixing in a photonic crystal fiber. The idler frequency is resonant in the oscillator cavity, and we find that bandpass filtering the feedback is essential for a stable, narrow-bandwidth output. Experimental results agree quite well with numerical simulations of the device. Transform-limited 2 ps pulses with energy up to 4 nJ can be generated at the signal wavelength. The average power is 180 mW, and the relative-intensity noise is much lower than that of a similar parametric amplifier. High-quality coherent Raman images of mouse tissues recorded with this source are presented.

We report a large normal dispersion erbium-doped fiber laser with self-similar pulse evolution in the gain fiber. The cavity is stabilized by the local nonlinear attractor in the gain fiber through the use of a narrow filter. Experimental results are accounted for by numerical simulations. This laser produces 3.5 nJ pulses, which can be dechirped to 70 fs with an external grating pair.

We demonstrate the use of coherent division and recombination of the pulse within an ultrafast laser cavity to manage the nonlinear phase accumulation and scale the output pulse energy. We implement the divided-pulse technique in an ytterbium-doped fiber laser and achieve 16-times scaling of the pulse energy, to generate 6 nJ and 1.4 ps solitons in single mode fiber. Potential extensions of this concept are discussed.

No abstract