Imaging soliton dynamics in optical microcavities

Abstract

Solitons are self-sustained wavepackets that occur in many physical systems. Their recent demonstration in optical microresonators has provided a new platform for the study of nonlinear optical physics with practical implications for miniaturization of time standards, spectroscopy tools, and frequency metrology systems. However, despite its importance to the understanding of soliton physics, as well as development of new applications, imaging the rich dynamical behavior of solitons in microcavities has not been possible. These phenomena require a difficult combination of high-temporal-resolution and long-record-length in order to capture the evolving trajectories of closely spaced microcavity solitons. Here, an imaging method is demonstrated that visualizes soliton motion with sub-picosecond resolution over arbitrary time spans. A wide range of complex soliton transient behavior are characterized in the temporal or spectral domain, including soliton formation, collisions, spectral breathing, and soliton decay. This method can serve as a visualization tool for developing new soliton applications and understanding complex soliton physics in microcavities.

Collective synthesis and dissociation of soliton molecules in parallel optical-soliton reactors

“…Compared with other platforms commonly used in the study of soliton dynamics, such as microresonators 8,9,13,29 , passive bre loops 31,38 , and solid-state mode-locked lasers 11,12 , optoacoustically mode-locked bre lasers 14 offer several advantages, including high exibility and simple con guration with no need of external driving or feedback control. The long bre cavity dissected by the self-organized optomechanical lattice not only accommodate large number of solitons (with possibility of further expansion using longer cavity), but also tolerate the group velocity discrepancies between different solitonic elements, leading to well-isolated and fully-manipulated parallel soliton reactions for the rst time.…”

“…Naturally, interactions between solitons in bres 4,5 were brought under spotlight as critical limitations or mechanisms in these applications, leading to a heap of progresses since 1980s. The studies on soliton interactions continue to date and are currently experiencing a vibrant renaissance, partly due to developments of the timestretched dispersive Fourier transform (DFT) method 6 which facilitates resolving of transient soliton dynamics, as well as due to trending focuses on soliton microresonators [7][8][9] which, as novel platforms, advance rapidly toward chip-scale integration. In parallel, many light-matter analogies have been suggested for multi-soliton complexes bound by soliton interactions [10][11][12][13][14][15][16] , epitomized by the "soliton molecules" 17,18 which refers to closely bound solitons through direct interactions [19][20][21][22] .…”

“…By deliberately initiating the formation and dissociation of soliton molecules in these parallel reactors globally and individually using a variety of all-optical methods, we are able to uncover previously unexplored stochastic aspects of soliton-soliton interactions. The build-up of a stable soliton molecule, observed in the experiments, generally requires multiple collisions 8,19,24,25 before the eventual establishment of stable soliton-soliton spacing and phase. In contrast, the break-up of soliton molecules can occur in many difference ways.…”

Coherent satellites in multispectral regenerative frequency microcombs

“…Most studied microcombs start with modulation instability (MI) and parametric four-wave mixing (FWM), leading to phase-correlated primary comb modes, followed by sub-comb families generation 21,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31] . The primarily phase-matched modes, spectrally determined by the local 3 anomalous dispersion, nonlinear frequency shift and pump-resonance detuning, will shape the total bandwidth and general envelope of the overall comb spectrum.…”

Coexistence and Interactions between Nonlinear States with Different Polarizations in a Monochromatically Driven Passive Kerr Resonator

“…They are pulses of light, able to recirculate indefinitely in a resonator without changes in shape or energy. They have attracted significant attention in the context of high-Q microresonators [20] due to their role in the generation of broadband coherent frequency combs [21][22][23][24][25][26][27], and their fundamental characteristics and dynamics have been extensively investigated using macroscopic fiber ring resonators [28][29][30][31][32][33].…”