Spontaneous symmetry breaking of dissipative optical solitons in a two-component Kerr resonator

Abstract

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.

4-Dimensional Symmetry Breaking of Light in Kerr Ring Resonators

“…By splitting the linearly polarised light fields into left-and right-circularly polarised components we obtain a total of four circulating fields. SSB, have also seen a recent flurry of studies both theoretical and experimental [8,10,[18][19][20][21].…”

“…The two separate setups, counter-propagation and two-polarization, are already proving promising in their scope of applications. The polarisation system can be used as a polarization controller [19] and for producing SSB temporal cavity solitons [20] and breathers [21] with the potential to provide novel methods for two-components frequency combs. The counterpropagating system can be used to enhance the Sagnac effect [5] and to realise isolators and circulators [22] for, for example, all optical computing.…”

Coexistence of dark vector soliton Kerr combs in normal dispersion resonators

“…When polarization degree of freedom is taken into account within Kerr resonators, new modulational instabilities can appear due to polarization degree of freedom [11][12][13], leading to domain wall vector solitons [14,15], symmetry breaking [16][17][18][19][20][21], and soliton bound states [22]. Recently, polarization properties of bright DS frequency combs have been the subject of investigation both theoretically [23][24][25][26][27] and experimentally [15].…”

Modulation instability of Kerr optical frequency combs in dual-coupled optical cavities

“…Since Kerr OFCs associating with DKSs were first observed in a MgF 2 crystal microresonator in 2014 [9], DKSs have been demonstrated in several platforms including Si 3 N 4 [10], AlN [11], and silica [12]. Meanwhile, the influence of high order dispersion [13][14][15], dispersion perturbation caused by mode coupling between different mode families [16,17], two-component pump [18][19][20], thermo-optic effect [21,22], and Raman effect [23,24] on Kerr OFCs was investigated. With the development of silicon photonics [25], there are increasingly applications having been proposed based on on-chip Kerr OFCs, such as ultrafast distance measurements [26], parallel convolution processing [27], and spectroscopy [28].…”