Intracavity characterization of micro-comb generation in the single-soliton regime

Wang, Pei Hsun; Jaramillo-Villegas, José A.; Xuan, Yi; Xue, Xiaoxiao; Bao, Chengying; Leaird, Daniel E.; Qi, Minghao; Weiner, Andrew M.

doi:10.1364/oe.24.010890

Cited by 114 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…The carriers next to the pumped resonance are superimposed by strong amplified stimulated emission (ASE) noise that originates from the optical amplifier. In future implementations, ASE noise can be avoided by extracting the comb light from the microresonator using a drop-port geometry [45]. This would avoid direct transmission of broadband ASE noise through the device and, in addition, would render the notch filter for pump light suppression superfluous.…”

Section: Soliton Comb Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microresonator-based solitons for massively parallel coherent optical communications

Marin-Palomo

Kemal

Karpov

et al. 2017

Nature

1,088

713

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Optical solitons are waveforms that preserve their shape while propagating, relying on a balance of dispersion and nonlinearity [1,2]. Soliton-based data transmission schemes were investigated in the 1980s, promising to overcome the limitations imposed by dispersion of optical fibers. These approaches, however, were eventually abandoned in favor of wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) schemes that are easier to implement and offer improved scalability to higher data rates. Here, we show that solitons may experience a comeback in optical communications, this time not as a competitor, but as a key element of massively parallel WDM. Instead of encoding data on the soliton itself, we exploit continuously circulating dissipative Kerr solitons (DKS) in a microresonator [3,4]. DKS are generated in an integrated silicon nitride microresonator [5] by four-photon interactions mediated by Kerr nonlinearity, leading to low-noise, spectrally smooth and broadband optical frequency combs [6]. In our experiments, we use two interleaved soliton Kerr combs to trans-mit a data stream of more than 50 Tbit/s on a total of 179 individual optical carriers that span the entire telecommunication C and L bands. Equally important, we demonstrate coherent detection of a WDM data stream by using a pair of microresonator Kerr soliton combs one as a multi-wavelength light source at the transmitter, and another one as a corresponding local oscillator (LO) at the receiver. This approach exploits the scalability advantages of microresonator soliton comb sources for massively parallel optical communications both at the transmitter and receiver side. Taken together, the results prove the significant potential of these sources to replace arrays of continuous-wave lasers in high-speed communications. In combination with advanced spatial multiplexing schemes [7,8] and highly integrated silicon photonic circuits [9], DKS combs may bring chip-scale petabit/s transceivers into reach.The first observation of solitons in optical fibers [2] in 1980 was immediately followed by major research efforts to harness such waveforms for long-haul communications [1]. In these schemes, data was encoded on soliton pulses by simple amplitude modulation using on-off-keying (OOK). However, even though the viability of the approach was experimentally demonstrated by transmission over one million kilometres [10], the vision of soliton-based communications was ultimately hindered by difficulties in achieving shape-preserving propagation in real transmission systems [1] and by the fact that nonlinear interactions intrinsically prevent dense packing of soliton pulses in either the time or frequency domain. Moreover, with the advent of wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), line rates in long-haul communication systems could be increased by rather simple parallel transmission of data streams with lower symbol rates, which are less dispersion sensitive. Consequently, soliton-based communication schemes have moved out of focus over the last two decades. More recently, frequ...

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Section: Soliton Comb Generationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microresonator-based solitons for massively parallel coherent optical communications

Marin-Palomo

Kemal

Karpov

et al. 2017

Nature

1,088

713

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“…To overcome the transient instability in soliton generation in SiN microresonators, the laser is tuned backward after crossing the cavity resonance [29,44]. This backwards tuning also gives access to single soliton.…”

Section: Onatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observation of Fermi-Pasta-Ulam Recurrence Induced by Breather Solitons in an Optical Microresonator

et al. 2016

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We present, experimentally and numerically, the observation of Fermi-Pasta-Ulam recurrence induced by breather solitons in a high-Q SiN microresonator. Breather solitons can be excited by increasing the pump power at a relatively small pump phase detuning in microresonators. Out of phase power evolution is observed for groups of comb lines around the center of the spectrum compared to groups of lines in the spectral wings. The evolution of the power spectrum is not symmetric with respect to the spectrum center. Numerical simulations based on the generalized Lugiato-Lefever equation are in good agreement with the experimental results and unveil the role of stimulated Raman scattering in the symmetry breaking of the power spectrum evolution. Our results shows that optical microresonators can be exploited as a powerful platform for the exploration of soliton dynamics.The Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) recurrence was first raised by Fermi and his colleagues in the 1950s [1]. In a numerical simulation of string oscillation with nonlinear coupling between different modes to test thermalization theory, they found at a certain point the energy will return to the fundamentally excited mode, rather than distributing homogenously among different modes. This discovery triggered the rigorous investigation on plasma physics by Zubusky and Kruskal [2], which led to the discovery of solitons. Solitons and their related theory have revolutionized the research in diverse arenas, including fluid dynamics [3], optics [4,5], Bose-Eistein condensation [6,7].In optics, the FPU recurrence was first demonstrated based on the modulation instability (MI) in optical fibers [8]. As a feature of the FPU recurrence, the powers of the pump mode and the signal mode in MI evolves periodically with a phase delay of π. The collision between solitons in fibers also facilitated the observation of FPU recurrence in an active cavity [9]. Furthermore, optical breathers, e.g., the Akhmediev breather (AB) in the nonlinear schrödinger equation (NLSE) [10][11][12], are an important manifestation of FPU recurrence. Since collisions between breathers and solitons can result in optical rogue waves [13][14][15], studying FPU recurrence and the control of the transition between solitons and breathers may contribute to the understanding of optical rogue waves.Recently, maturity in the fabrication of high-Q microresonators [16] has fueled rapid progress on Kerr frequency comb generation [17][18][19][20][21][22]. In the frequency domain, microresonators based frequency comb synthesis has promising applications in optical clock [23], optical arbitrary waveform generation [24], and microwave photonics [25,26] etc. In the time domain, microresonators provide a new and important approach to realize optical solitons [21,[27][28][29][30]. Different from mode-locked lasers, passive microresonators have no active gain or saturable absorber, making them free from the influence of the complex gain dynamics. Hence, soliton generation in microresonators can exhibit excellent predicta...

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“…These mode interactions often frustrate the formation of solitons [11] and, as a result, microresonators are typically designed to minimize or exclude entirely the resulting modal avoided crossings [5,[12][13][14][15]. Also, while dispersive wave phase matching is normally induced by more gradual variations in dispersion, spatialmode interactions produce spectrally abrupt variations that can activate a dispersive wave in the vicinity of a narrowband soliton.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The formation of DKSs has recently been described in both optical fiber [23] and microresonators [5,[12][13][14][15]. This type of dissipative soliton [24] forms through a double balance of secondorder dispersion with the Kerr nonlinearity and cavity loss with Kerr-induced parametric gain [12].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial-mode-interaction-induced dispersive waves and their active tuning in microresonators

Yang

Vahala

2016

Optica

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The nonlinear propagation of optical pulses in dielectric waveguides and resonators induces a wide range of remarkable interactions. One example is dispersive-wave generation, the optical analog of Cherenkov radiation. These waves play an essential role in the fiber-optic spectral broadeners used in spectroscopy and metrology. Dispersive waves form when a soliton pulse begins to radiate power as a result of higher-order dispersion. Recently, dispersive-wave generation in microcavities has been reported by phase matching the waves to dissipative Kerr solitons. Here, it is shown that spatial mode interactions within a microcavity can be used to induce dispersive waves. The soliton self-frequency shift is also shown to enable fine tuning control of the dispersive-wave frequency. Both this mechanism and spatial mode interactions allow spectral control of these important waves in microresonators. If the spectrum of a soliton pulse extends into regions where second-order dispersion changes sign, then radiation into a new pulse, the dispersive wave, may occur at a phase-matching wavelength [1,2]. The generation of these waves is analogous to Cherenkov radiation [3] and extends the spectral reach of optical pulses [4]. The recent ability to control dispersion in microresonators has allowed accurate spectral placement of dispersive waves relative to a radiating cavity soliton [5]. Such dispersionengineered control has made possible 2f-3f self-referencing of frequency microcombs [6] and octave-spanning double-dispersive waves [7]. Dispersive-wave generation in optical fibers has traditionally relied upon control of geometrical dispersion in conjunction with the intrinsic material dispersion of the dielectric [4], and this same method has been successfully demonstrated in microresonators [5]. Recently, spatial mode interactions in multimode fiber have also been used for this purpose [8][9][10].Here, spatial mode interactions within a microresonator are used to phase match a soliton pulse to a dispersive wave. These mode interactions often frustrate the formation of solitons [11] and, as a result, microresonators are typically designed to minimize or exclude entirely the resulting modal avoided crossings [5,[12][13][14][15]. Also, while dispersive wave phase matching is normally induced by more gradual variations in dispersion, spatialmode interactions produce spectrally abrupt variations that can activate a dispersive wave in the vicinity of a narrowband soliton. Below, the demonstration of dispersive-wave generation by this process is presented after characterizing two strongly interacting spatial-mode families. The phase matching of the dispersive wave to the soliton is then studied, including the effect of soliton frequency offset relative to the pump, as is caused by soliton recoil or by the Raman-induced soliton self-frequency shift (SSFS) [5,13,[16][17][18]. It is shown that this mechanism enables active tuning control of the dispersive wave by pump tuning.In the experiment, an ultrahigh-Q silica microresonator (3 mm...

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Intracavity characterization of micro-comb generation in the single-soliton regime

Cited by 114 publications

References 33 publications

Microresonator-based solitons for massively parallel coherent optical communications

Microresonator-based solitons for massively parallel coherent optical communications

Observation of Fermi-Pasta-Ulam Recurrence Induced by Breather Solitons in an Optical Microresonator

Spatial-mode-interaction-induced dispersive waves and their active tuning in microresonators

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