Spontaneous symmetry breaking of dissipative optical solitons in a two-component Kerr resonator

Abstract

Dissipative solitons are self-localised structures that can persist indefinitely in "open" systems characterised by continual exchange of energy and/or matter with the environment. They play a key role in photonics, underpinning technologies from mode-locked lasers to microresonator optical frequency combs. Here we report on the first experimental observations of spontaneous symmetry breaking of dissipative optical solitons. Our experiments are performed in a passive, coherently driven nonlinear optical ring resonator, where dissipative solitons arise in the form of persisting pulses of light known as Kerr cavity solitons. We engineer balance between two orthogonal polarization modes of the resonator, and show that despite perfectly symmetric operating conditions, the solitons supported by the system can spontaneously break their symmetry, giving rise to two distinct but co-existing vectorial solitons with mirror-like, asymmetric polarization states. We also show that judiciously applied perturbations allow for deterministic switching between the two symmetry-broken dissipative soliton states, thus enabling all-optical manipulation of topological bit sequences. Our experimental observations are in excellent agreement with numerical simulations and theoretical analyses. Besides delivering fundamental insights at the intersection of multi-mode nonlinear optical resonators, dissipative structures, and spontaneous symmetry breaking, our work provides new avenues for the storage, coding, and manipulation of light.

9 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Microresonator Soliton Dual-Comb Spectroscopy
• Experimental demonstration of spontaneous chirality in a nonlinear microresonator
• Spontaneous mirror-symmetry breaking in a photonic molecule
• Coexistence and interactions between nonlinear states with different polarizations in a monochromatically driven passive Kerr resonator
• Self-switching Kerr oscillations of counter-propagating light in microresonators
• An all-optical buffer based on temporal cavity solitons operating at 10 Gb/s

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• Real-time imaging of standing-wave patterns in microresonators
• Vector optomechanical entanglement
• Modulation instability of Kerr optical frequency combs in dual-coupled optical cavities
• Generalized Theory of Optical Resonator and Waveguide Modes and their Linear and Kerr Nonlinear Coupling
• Theory and Application of Cavity Solitons in Photonic Devices
• Experimental observation of spontaneous symmetry breaking in a quantum phase transition
• Dynamics of temporal Kerr cavity solitons in the presence of rapid parameter inhomogeneities: from bichromatic driving to third-order dispersion
• Recent advances in the combination of nonlinearity and exceptional points
• Nonlinear topological symmetry protection in a dissipative system