Deterministic generation and switching of dissipative Kerr soliton in a thermally controlled micro-resonator

Abstract

Dissipative Kerr solitons (DKSs) in the high-Q microresonator correspond to self-organized short pulse in time domain via double balance between dispersion and Kerr nonlinearity, as well as cavity loss and parametric gain. In this paper, we first experimentally demonstrate deterministic generation and switching of DKSs in a thermally controlled micro-ring resonator based on highindex doped silica glass platform. In our scheme, an auxiliary laser is introduced to timely balance the intracavity heat fluctuation. By decreasing the operating temperature through a thermo-electric cooler, primary-, chaotic-comb and soliton crystal are firstly generated, then increasing the temperature, DKSs switching and single soliton are robustly accessed, which is independent of the tuning speed. During the switching process, varieties of DKSs are identified by tens of the featured discrete "soliton-steps", which is favorable for study of onchip soliton interactions and nonlinear applications.

Advances in soliton microcomb generation

“…As shown in Fig. 2, SMC generation in the visible, 31,33 near-, 10,13,15,30,34,35 and midinfrared 36 regions have all been achieved, covering a wavelength range of down to ∼750 nm 31 and up to ∼4300 nm. 36 Benefitting from the full coherent feature across the whole spectral coverage [10][11][12]37 the advent of SMCs has promoted research in various applications, such as dual-comb spectroscopy (DCS), 38 terabit coherent optical communications, 39 photonic-integrated frequency synthesizers, 40 ultrafast distance measurements, 41 and calibration of astrophysical spectrometers for exoplanet searching.…”

“…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.…”

“…Until now, based on advanced experimental techniques, SMCs have been realized in an MgF 2 whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) resonator, 10 silica disk 13 and microrod, 28,29 AlN, 30 LiNbO 3 , 31 and CMOS-compatible microring resonator of SiN, 12 Si, 32 and high-index doped silica glass. 15 Table 1 briefly summarizes some typical SMCs obtained on various material platforms with distinct cavity properties. Furthermore, because of the developed fabrication process and improved-dispersion engineering, SMCs with different spectral coverages have been demonstrated on various material platforms.…”

Quantum Key Distribution with On‐Chip Dissipative Kerr Soliton

“…By carefully tuning the relative frequency detuning of the pump laser and the microring resonance, the DKS could be realized [24,25,31]. Here, we adopt the auxiliary laser assisted soliton switching method to kick the microring to the multi-soliton state [32,33]. Since the comb spacing of the Nsoliton state is N-times of the FSR, we manually switch the system to the single soliton state for a full comb by annihilating the number of soliton step by step [32,34].…”

“…Here, we adopt the auxiliary laser assisted soliton switching method to kick the microring to the multi-soliton state [32,33]. Since the comb spacing of the Nsoliton state is N-times of the FSR, we manually switch the system to the single soliton state for a full comb by annihilating the number of soliton step by step [32,34]. It is worth noting that, the auxiliary laser is coupled with the microring counter-propagates with respect to the soliton, and the polarization of the laser is also orthogonal with the soliton, thus the auxiliary laser are filtrated using a polarizing beam splitter (PBS) and has little influence to the soliton source.…”