Soliton microcomb range measurement

Suh, Myoung-Gyun; Vahala, Kerry J.

doi:10.1126/science.aao1968

Cited by 540 publications

(282 citation statements)

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“…Nonetheless, the compactness of microcavity-based soliton systems has practical importance for miniaturization of frequency comb technology 27 through chip-based microcombs 28,29 . Indeed, spectroscopy systems 30,31 , coherent communication 32 , ranging 33,34 , and frequency synthesis 35 demonstrations using the new miniature platform have already been reported. Moreover, the unique physics of the new soliton microcavity system has led to observation of many unforeseen physical phenomena involving compound soliton states, such as Stokes solitons 36 , soliton number switching 37 and soliton crystals 38 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imaging soliton dynamics in optical microcavities

Yang

Vahala

2018

Nat Commun

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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.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imaging soliton dynamics in optical microcavities

Yang

Vahala

2018

Nat Commun

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“…Compared to earlier microcombs [7], soliton microcombs are stable, offer reproducible spectral envelopes and generate short pulses. Moreover, several conventional comb applications have been demonstrated using soliton microcombs including dual-comb spectroscopy [8,9], dual-comb distance measurement [10,11], and optical frequency synthesis [12].Because of their small size, soliton microcombs have much higher pulse repetition rates (typically, tens of GHz to several THz) than those of conventional mode-locked laser combs. The small size also enables low parametric oscillation threshold [13] and overall low operating power on account of the associated small mode volume.…”

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Gigahertz-repetition-rate soliton microcombs

Suh

Vahala

2018

Optica

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103

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Soliton microcombs with repetition rates as low as 1.86 GHz are demonstrated, thereby entering a regime more typical of Since their invention, frequency combs have revolutionized a wide range of applications including spectroscopy, time standards, microwave generation, and laser ranging [1]. Conventional frequency combs are table-top devices and emit ultrashort pulses at repetition rates (i.e., comb line spacing) that typically lie between 100 MHz to 10 GHz [1]. An important recent development has been soliton mode-locking in miniature, high-Q microresonators [2][3][4][5][6]. Compared to earlier microcombs [7], soliton microcombs are stable, offer reproducible spectral envelopes and generate short pulses. Moreover, several conventional comb applications have been demonstrated using soliton microcombs including dual-comb spectroscopy [8,9], dual-comb distance measurement [10,11], and optical frequency synthesis [12].Because of their small size, soliton microcombs have much higher pulse repetition rates (typically, tens of GHz to several THz) than those of conventional mode-locked laser combs. The small size also enables low parametric oscillation threshold [13] and overall low operating power on account of the associated small mode volume. However, while higher repetition rates (>10 GHz) are useful in certain applications [7,10,14], lower repetitions rates (<10 GHz) are desirable to resolve narrower spectral lines [8], to create amplified high-peak-power pulses for continuum generation [15], and to enable use of low-power signal processing electronics [1]. Here, we report soliton microcombs with repetition rates as low as 1.859 GHz, which is substantially lower than other rates reported to date and which also overlaps with rates for conventional frequency combs. The latter feature suggests that soliton microcombs can provide many functions offered by conventional table-top comb technology.To maintain low threshold and operating power in the lower repetition rate (and larger mode volume) devices, we use ultra-high quality factor silica wedge disks [16]. The thickness of the silica disk is ∼8 μm, the wedge angle is typically in the range of 10-40 deg and the soliton repetition frequency is determined by the disk diameter (D) which is controlled with precision 1:20,000. These resonator design parameters can be adjusted to control resonator dispersion, minimize avoided-mode-crossings and (for the rates <11 GHz) avoid stimulated Brillouin scattering [16]. In the experiment, a continuous-wave fiber laser at 1550 nm is amplified by an erbium-doped fiber amplifier and coupled into

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“…By tuning the relative pump powers in the two directions, we can control the repetition rate of the two soliton-modelocked pulse trains. Such a dual comb source using a single pump laser and single microresonator eliminates common mode noise due to relative fluctuations between two resonators and lasers and would enable improved real-time, high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) measurements of molecular spectra [40], timeresolved measurements of fast chemical processes [46], and precise distance measurements [47,48]. We characterize the generated counter-rotating solitons (b) individually, measuring the optical spectra and transmitted optical powers in CW and CCW directions and (c) after combining the output in both directions to measure the mixed optical and heterodyned RF signal.…”

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Counter-rotating cavity solitons in a silicon nitride microresonator

et al. 2018

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We demonstrate the generation of counter-rotating cavity solitons in a silicon nitride microresonator using a fixed, single-frequency laser. We demonstrate a dual 3-soliton state with a difference in the repetition rates of the soliton trains that can be tuned by varying the ratio of pump powers in the two directions. Such a system enables a highly compact, tunable dual comb source that can be used for applications such as spectroscopy and distance ranging.Advancements in optical frequency comb technology over the past two decades have enabled applications in a wide range of fields including precision spectroscopy [1], frequency metrology [2], optical clockwork [3,4], astronomical spectrograph calibration [5,6], and microwave signal synthesis [7]. Applications benefit from the high precision of the frequencies of the comb lines and require low noise, stable operation [8]. Stabilized low-noise comb sources were first demonstrated using mode-locked solid state lasers and fiber lasers [9,10]. Over the last decade, on-chip optical frequency comb generation using microresonators has seen significant progress and has been demonstrated in several materials including silica [11][12][13][14] [13, 14, 17, 20-22, 27, 29] by sweeping the relative detuning between the laser and cavity resonance from the blue-to the red-detuned [17,30]. The dynamics of mode-locking have been studied using various approaches to control the effective detuning, including laser frequency tuning [17,22,29], power kick [13,14,21], and resonance frequency tuning using integrated heaters [20] or free-carrier lifetime control [27].Recently, there has been interest in studying the nonlinear dynamics of bidirectionally pumped microresonators [31,32]. For the case in which the pumps have unequal powers, the counter-rotating fields experience different nonlinear phase shifts that leads to unequal * Corresponding author: chaitanya.joshi@columbia.edu detuning from the cavity resonances for the clockwise (CW) and counter-clockwise (CCW) directions. Such behavior can lead to bistability [31] and can be exploited to create a gyroscope with enhanced sensitivity to rotation [33,34]. For the case in which such a system can be mode-locked it would result in the generation of two soliton trains with different repetition rates in a single microresonator and thus be used as a dual-comb source in a number of applications [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42]. Recently counterpropagating solitons were generated in silica microresonators using a single laser, frequency shifted using two acousto-optic modulators (AOM's) pumping a single microresonator [32]. The difference in effective detuning was controlled using the two AOM's and leads to a difference in repetition rate for the solitons. While there have also been recent demonstrations of bidirectional modelocked solid state [43] and fiber [44,45] laser cavities, a microresonator-based system could be highly compact and fully integrated onto a chip.In this Letter, we present a novel approach to generating counter-rotating...

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Soliton microcomb range measurement

Cited by 540 publications

References 43 publications

Imaging soliton dynamics in optical microcavities

Imaging soliton dynamics in optical microcavities

Gigahertz-repetition-rate soliton microcombs

Counter-rotating cavity solitons in a silicon nitride microresonator

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