Soliton bursts and deterministic dissipative Kerr soliton generation in auxiliary-assisted microcavities

Abstract

Dissipative Kerr solitons in resonant frequency combs offer a promising route for ultrafast mode-locking, precision spectroscopy and time-frequency standards. The dynamics for the dissipative soliton generation, however, are intrinsically intertwined with thermal nonlinearities, limiting the soliton generation parameter map and statistical success probabilities of the solitary state. Here, via use of an auxiliary laser heating approach to suppress thermal dragging dynamics in dissipative soliton comb formation, we demonstrate stable Kerr soliton singlet formation and soliton bursts. First, we access a new soliton existence range with an inverse-sloped Kerr soliton evolution—diminishing soliton energy with increasing pump detuning. Second, we achieve deterministic transitions from Turing-like comb patterns directly into the dissipative Kerr soliton singlet pulse bypassing the chaotic states. This is achieved by avoiding subcomb overlaps at lower pump power, with near-identical singlet soliton comb generation over twenty instances. Third, with the red-detuned pump entrance route enabled, we uncover unique spontaneous soliton bursts in the direct formation of low-noise optical frequency combs from continuum background noise. The burst dynamics are due to the rapid entry and mutual attraction of the pump laser into the cavity mode, aided by the auxiliary laser and matching well with our numerical simulations. Enabled by the auxiliary-assisted frequency comb dynamics, we demonstrate an application of automatic soliton comb recovery and long-term stabilization against strong external perturbations. Our findings hold potential to expand the parameter space for ultrafast nonlinear dynamics and precision optical frequency comb stabilization.

Advances in soliton microcomb generation

“…As a result, the dramatic decrease of intracavity heat when a pump laser tunes into a soliton existing range can be effectively compensated for by an auxiliary laser located at the blue-detuned regime. This principle has been verified recently, 15,16,28,29,34 and the requirement for a rigid tuning time (on the order of thermal lifetime) can be relaxed using the auxiliary-laser-assisted approach.…”

“…7(a), where the auxiliary and pump lasers are counter-coupled into a Si 3 N 4 microresonator. 16 Figure 7(b) shows the relative position of resonances and lasers during the tuning process. First, the auxiliary laser is settled at the blue-detuned side, which approaches the resonance peak.…”

“…To overcome the strong thermaloptical effect that hinders steady SMC access, various schemes have been implemented. A representative work is the first temporal soliton generation using a frequency-scanning method; 10 since then "power-kicking," 12,13 thermal tuning, 14 and auxiliarylaser-based 15,16 methods have been introduced. Meanwhile, rich types of soliton states, including Stokes soliton induced by the Raman effect, 17 dual-soliton generation in a single microcavity, 18 soliton crystals, 19 breathers, 20 laser cavity solitons, 21 soliton molecules, 22 and dark pulse states operating in a normal-dispersion regime, 23 have all been discovered (Fig.…”

RF Photonic Signal Processing with Kerr Micro-Combs: Integration, Fractional Differentiation and Hilbert Transforms

“…Apart from their low spacing, these micro-combs operated via a different process than DKS states [66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73], a process termed soliton crystals [129,130]. Many breakthroughs have been achieved with micro-combs, including ultralow pump power combs [131], dark solitons [132], laser-cavity solitons [133] and others [134][135][136][137][138][139].…”

Photonic RF spectral filters based on transversal filters with Kerr microcombs of varying free spectral ranges

“…Of these approaches, EO comb-based methods have been in use the longest and have demonstrated many powerful functions. Integrated optical Kerr frequency comb sources, or "microcombs" [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113] have come into focus as a fundamentally new and powerful tool due to their ability to provide highly coherent multiple wavelength channels with a very high degree of wavelength spacing control, from a single source. They originate via optical parametric oscillation in monolithic micro-ring resonators (MRRs), offer significant advantages over more traditional multi-wavelength sources for RF applications.…”