Dissipative Kerr solitons in photonic molecules

Abstract

Many physical systems display quantized energy states. In optics, interacting resonant cavities show a transmission spectrum with split eigenfrequencies, similar to the split energy levels that result from interacting states in bonded multi-atomic, i.e. molecular, systems. Here, we study the nonlinear dynamics of photonic diatomic molecules in linearly coupled microresonators and demonstrate that the system supports the formation of self-enforcing solitary waves when a laser is tuned across a split energy level. The output corresponds to a frequency comb (microcomb) whose characteristics in terms of power spectral distribution are unattainable in single-mode (atomic) systems. Photonic molecule microcombs are coherent, reproducible, and reach high conversion efficiency and spectral flatness whilst operated with a laser power of a few milliwatts. These properties can favor the heterogeneous integration of microcombs with semiconductor laser technology and facilitate applications in optical communications, spectroscopy and astronomy.

References in corpus (6)

• Loss-induced suppression and revival of lasing
• Microresonator Soliton Dual-Comb Spectroscopy
• 1 Low power continuous-wave nonlinear optics in silica glass integrated waveguide structures
• Frequency combs and platicons in optical microresonators with normal GVD
• A narrow-linewidth III-V/Si/Si3N4 laser using multilayer heterogeneous integration
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Cited by in corpus (30)

• Applications of integrated optical microcombs
• High-performance lasers for fully integrated silicon nitride photonics
• High-efficiency and broadband electro-optic frequency combs enabled by coupled micro-resonators
• Quantum optics of soliton microcombs
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• Platicon microcomb generation using laser self-injection locking
• Experimental realisations of the fractional Schrödinger equation in the temporal domain
• Topological Frequency Combs and Nested Temporal Solitons
• Tailoring microcombs with inverse-designed, meta-dispersion microresonators
• Rabi resonance splitting phenomena in photonic integrated circuits
• Soliton Pulses in Photonic Crystal Fabry-Perot Microresonators
• Fourier synthesis dispersion engineering of photonic crystal microrings for broadband frequency combs
• Optical Kerr soliton microcombs for high bandwidth communications
• Nonreciprocal optical solitons in a spinning Kerr resonator
• Quantized topological energy pumping and Weyl points in Floquet synthetic dimensions with a driven-dissipative photonic molecule
• Integrated Buried Heaters for Efficient Spectral Control of Air-Clad Microresonator Frequency Combs
• Protected generation of dissipative Kerr solitons in supermodes of coupled optical microresonators
• Dissipative structures in topological lattices of nonlinear optical resonators
• Impact of Stimulated Raman Scattering on Dark Soliton Generation in a Silica Microresonator
• Optical microcombs in whispering gallery mode crystalline resonators with dispersive intermode interactions
• Self-injection-locked optical parametric oscillator based on microcombs
• Modulation instability of Kerr optical frequency combs in dual-coupled optical cavities
• Lasing on hybridized soliton frequency combs
• Floquet Topological Dissipative Kerr Solitons and Incommensurate Frequency Combs
• Self-pulsing and chaos in the asymmetrically-driven dissipative photonic Bose-Hubbard dimer: A bifurcation analysis
• Optimization of the degenerate optical parametric oscillations threshold in bichromatically pumped microresonator
• Reconfigurable Non-Hermitian Soliton Combs using Dissipative Couplings and Topological Windings
• Self-cooling, blue-detuned dissipative Kerr microresonator soliton comb
• Multimode Single-Ring Photonic Molecule
• Engineered mode coupling in high-Q microresonators enables deterministic low-repetition-rate soliton microcombs