We report on experimental observations of coexistence and interactions between nonlinear states with different polarizations in a passive Kerr resonator driven at a single carrier frequency. Using a fiber ring resonator with adjustable birefringence, we partially overlap nonlinear resonances of two orthogonal polarization modes, achieving coexistence between different nonlinear states by locking the driving laser frequency at various points within the overlap region. In particular, we observe coexistence between temporal cavity solitons and modulation instability patterns, as well as coexistence between two nonidentical cavity solitons with different polarizations. We also observe interactions between the distinctly polarized cavity solitons, as well as spontaneous excitation and annihilation of solitons by a near-orthogonally polarized unstable modulation instability pattern. By demonstrating that a single frequency driving field can support coexistence between differentially polarized solitons and complex modulation instability patterns, our work sheds light on the rich dissipative dynamics of multimode Kerr resonators. Our findings could also be of relevance to the generation of multiplexed microresonator frequency combs.

We report on an experimental and numerical study of temporal Kerr cavity soliton dynamics in dispersion-managed fiber ring resonators. We find that dispersion management can significantly magnify the Kelly-like resonant radiation sidebands emitted by the solitons. Because of the underlying phase-matching conditions, the sideband amplitudes tend to increase with increasing pumpcavity detuning, ultimately limiting the range of detunings over which the solitons can exist. Our experimental findings show excellent agreement with numerical simulations. * anie911@aucklanduni.ac.nz † m.erkintalo@auckland.ac.nz arXiv:1809.07886v1 [physics.optics]

Dissipative solitons are self-localized structures that can persist indefinitely in open systems driven out of equilibrium. They play a key role in photonics, underpinning technologies from mode-locked lasers to microresonator optical frequency combs. Here we report on experimental observations of spontaneous symmetry breaking of dissipative optical solitons. Our experiments are performed in a nonlinear optical ring resonator, where dissipative solitons arise in the form of persisting pulses of light known as Kerr cavity solitons. We engineer symmetry between two orthogonal polarization modes of the resonator and show that the solitons of the system can spontaneously break this 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. Our work delivers fundamental insights at the intersection of multi-mode nonlinear optical resonators, dissipative structures, and spontaneous symmetry breaking, and expands upon our understanding of dissipative solitons in coherently driven Kerr resonators.