Efficient visible frequency comb generation via Cherenkov radiation from a Kerr microcomb

Abstract

Optical frequency combs enable state-of-the-art applications including frequency metrology, optical clocks, astronomical measurements, and sensing. Recent demonstrations of microresonator-based Kerr frequency combs or microcombs pave the way to scalable and stable comb sources on a photonic chip. Generating microcombs in the visible wavelength range, however, has been limited by large material dispersion and optical loss. Here we demonstrate a scheme for efficiently generating visible microcomb in a high Q aluminum nitride microring resonator. Enhanced Pockels effect strongly couples infrared and visible modes into hybrid mode pairs, which participate in the Kerr microcomb generation process and lead to strong Cherenkov radiation in the visible band of an octave apart. A surprisingly high conversion efficiency of 22% is achieved from the pump laser to the visible comb. We further demonstrate a robust frequency tuning of the visible comb by more than one free spectral range and apply it to the absorption spectroscopy of a water-based dye molecule solution. Our work marks the first step towards high-efficiency visible microcomb generation and its utilization, and it also provides insights on the significance of Pockels effect and its strong coupling with Kerr nonlinearity in a single microcavity device.

9 pages, 6 figures

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Cited by in corpus (22)

• Applications of integrated optical microcombs
• Pockels Soliton Microcomb
• 17,000 %/W Second Harmonic Conversion Efficiency in Single Crystalline Aluminum Nitride Microresonators
• Photonic chip-based soliton frequency combs covering the biological imaging window
• Frequency comb generation via cascaded second-order nonlinearities in microresonators
• Visible nonlinear photonics via high-order-mode dispersion engineering
• Efficient frequency conversion in a degenerate ${\chi }^{(2)}$ microresonator
• Frequency comb up- and down-conversion in a synchronously-driven ${\chi }^{(2)}$ optical microresonator
• Two-colour dissipative solitons and breathers in microresonator second-harmonic generation
• All-Optical control of linear and nonlinear energy transfer via Zeno effect
• Optimal third-harmonic generation in an optical microcavity with ${\chi }^{(2)}$ and ${\chi }^{(3)}$ nonlinearities
• Near octave-spanning perfect soliton crystals in AlN microresonators
• Coupled-mode theory for microresonators with quadratic nonlinearity
• Bright-soliton frequency combs and dressed states in chi(2) microresonators
• Enhancement of the second-harmonic generation based on the cascaded second- and third-order nonlinear processes in a multimode optical microcavity
• Infrared Laser Locking to Rubidium Saturated Absorption Spectrum via a Photonic Chip Frequency Doubler
• Ultrabroadband Milliwatt-Level Resonant Frequency Doubling on a Chip
• Ladder of Eckhaus instabilities and parametric conversion in chi(2) microresonators
• Parametric conversion via second harmonic generation and two-hump solitons in phase-matched microresonators
• Stationary phase approximation for the Mach surface of superluminally moving source
• Multicolor continuous-variable quantum entanglement in the Kerr frequency comb
• Peregrine solitons and resonant radiation in cubic and quadratic media