Solitons articles within Nature Photonics

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  • Article |

    Kerr resonators can support a new form of parametrically driven temporal cavity soliton (and associated optical frequency comb), with potential performance advantages that include background-free operation and the possibility of very high pump-to-comb conversion efficiencies.

    • Grégory Moille
    • , Miriam Leonhardt
    •  & Miro Erkintalo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Photonic crystal microring resonators with a periodic corrugation inscribed along the resonator’s circumference allow programmable synthetic reflection for self-injection-locked microcombs and their operation exclusively in the single-soliton regime.

    • Alexander E. Ulanov
    • , Thibault Wildi
    •  & Tobias Herr

  • Obituary |

    Vladimir Zakharov was a man of a strong passion and grand intellect, who was equally and deservedly proud of both his scientific achievements and his poetry.

    • G. E. Falkovich
    • , E. A. Kuznetsov
    •  & S. K. Turitsyn

  • Perspective |

    Since the inception of the idea of temporal solitons in optical fibres, published in 1973, the concept of optical solitons has revolutionized the fundamental science of optics and photonics technologies. This Perspective gives an outlook on the future of solitons in ultrafast lasers, frequency combs, biomedical applications, telecommunications and signal processing, as well as the emerging new science of solitons.

    • Andrea Blanco-Redondo
    • , C. Martijn de Sterke
    •  & Sergei K. Turitsyn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Researchers demonstrated coherent dissipative Kerr solitons with a conversion efficiency exceeding 50% and good line spacing stability. The results may facilitate practical implementation of a scalable integrated photonic architecture for energy-efficient applications.

    • Óskar B. Helgason
    • , Marcello Girardi
    •  & Victor Torres-Company

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bright solitons are produced through the interaction of pulse pairs generated via a continuous-wave fibre laser, which pumps two coupled microresonators featuring normal dispersion. Multicolour pulse pairs over multiple rings can also be generated, of great promise for applications such as all-optical soliton buffers and memories, study of quantum combs and topological photonics.

    • Zhiquan Yuan
    • , Maodong Gao
    •  & Kerry Vahala

  • Article |

    This work reports an inverse design approach that can spectrally shape Kerr microcombs by imprinting a nanophotonic dispersion filter to a microresonator to engineer solitonic frequency-comb states in the resonator with an optimization algorithm.

    • Erwan Lucas
    • , Su-Peng Yu
    •  & Scott B. Papp

  • Article |

    By tuning the spatial width, the strength and the frequency of a pump beam in two-dimensional cylindrical microcavities supporting stable, robust photonic snake states, a set of broadband and perfectly synchronized two-dimensional frequency combs can be realized.

    • Salim B. Ivars
    • , Yaroslav V. Kartashov
    •  & Carles Milián

  • Article |

    Researchers demonstrate systems in which optical solitons coexist and interact with topological solitonic structures localized in the molecular alignment field of a soft birefringent medium. The findings could lead to solitonic tractor beams and new light–matter self-patterning phenomena.

    • Guilhem Poy
    • , Andrew J. Hess
    •  & Ivan I. Smalyukh

  • Article |

    The formation of ultra-short dissipative quadratic solitons is realized using optical parametric amplification at low pump energies and in the presence of substantial temporal walk-off between the pump and signal.

    • Arkadev Roy
    • , Rajveer Nehra
    •  & Alireza Marandi

  • Article |

    The quantum aspect of soliton microcomb from an integrated silicon carbide microresonator is studied in several regimes — below threshold, above threshold and in the soliton regime — using a single-photon optical spectrum analyser for second-order photon correlation measurement.

    • Melissa A. Guidry
    • , Daniil M. Lukin
    •  & Jelena Vučković

  • Article |

    Parametric driving of Kerr solitons – cavity soliton excitation around twice the carrier frequency of solitons – in an optical parametric oscillator with competing nonlinearities look prone to extend the applications of Kerr resonators to random number generators and Ising machines.

    • Nicolas Englebert
    • , Francesco De Lucia
    •  & François Leo

  • Article |

    By adding a carefully designed amplification section in a passive resonator, but pumping it below the lasing threshold, ultra-stable high-power cavity solitons can be formed, effectively removing the important barrier of having to work in low-loss environments.

    • Nicolas Englebert
    • , Carlos Mas Arabí
    •  & François Leo

  • Article |

    When a laser is tuned across a split energy level, photonic diatomic molecules in two linearly coupled microresonators support the formation of self-enforcing solitary waves, featuring coherent, tunable and reproducible microcombs with up to ten times higher net conversion efficiency than the state of the art.

    • Óskar B. Helgason
    • , Francisco R. Arteaga-Sierra
    •  & Victor Torres-Company

  • News & Views |

    Unexpected multimode solitary waves can be formed spontaneously in hollow-core fibres, hinting at a vast world of exciting nonlinear optics, with applications for generating few-cycle, ultra-intense pulses.

    • Logan G. Wright
    •  & Frank W. Wise

  • Article |

    The formation of multidimensional solitary states through the nonlinear propagation of high-energy pulses in a molecular gas-filled large-core hollow-core fibre is demonstrated, offering new opportunities for studying multimodal spatiotemporal dynamics in the high-energy regime.

    • Reza Safaei
    • , Guangyu Fan
    •  & François Légaré

  • Article |

    Photonic-chip-based microcomb solitons driven by Pockels nonlinearity—the quadratic χ(2) effect—instead of the Kerr soliton are demonstrated in an aluminium nitride microring resonator with a conversion efficiency of 17%.

    • Alexander W. Bruch
    • , Xianwen Liu
    •  & Hong X. Tang

  • News & Views |

    A phase transition between disordered and quasi-ordered states, known as the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless transition, has now been revealed in a two-dimensional photonic ‘fluid’. The interplay between phase singularities and coherence may lead to new vortex-based optical applications.

    • Matthieu Bellec
    •  & Claire Michel

  • Letter |

    Observations of decoherence from thermodynamic noise in microresonator soliton frequency combs and laser cooling that reduces soliton thermal decoherence to far below the ambient-temperature limit are described, linking nonlinear photonics and microscopic fluctuations.

    • Tara E. Drake
    • , Jordan R. Stone
    •  & Scott B. Papp

  • Article |

    By suppressing the second- and third-order intracavity dispersion using an intracavity spectral pulse shaper, a mode-locked laser that emits pure-quartic soliton pulses that arise from the interaction of the fourth-order dispersion and the Kerr nonlinearity is demonstrated.

    • Antoine F. J. Runge
    • , Darren D. Hudson
    •  & Andrea Blanco-Redondo

  • Comment |

    As a pioneer in the research on ultra-high-quality dielectric microresonators and their applications in nonlinear optics, frequency metrology and laser science, Mikhail Gorodetsky is badly missed.

    • Igor Bilenko
    • , Vladimir Ilchenko
    •  & Tobias J. Kippenberg

  • News & Views |

    Judicious scaling of the waveguide properties of a simple hollow capillary fibre filled with helium allows for powerful pulse temporal compression down to the sub-femtosecond level, further enabling the efficient generation of ultrafast ultraviolet light.

    • Benjamin Wetzel
    •  & Fetah Benabid

  • Article |

    Efficient power transfer from the pump to the soliton can be achieved through field coupling between two optical resonators, allowing soliton frequency comb generation with tens-to-hundreds-of-fold improvement in conversion efficiency compared with a traditional single-resonator comb.

    • Xiaoxiao Xue
    • , Xiaoping Zheng
    •  & Bingkun Zhou

  • Article |

    Optical soliton dynamics in large-core hollow capillary fibres is demonstrated. The findings enable the scaling of soliton effects by several orders of magnitude to the multi-millijoule energy and terawatt peak power levels, and open up opportunities for new-generation table-top light sources for ultrafast strong-field physics and advanced spectroscopy.

    • John C. Travers
    • , Teodora F. Grigorova
    •  & Federico Belli

  • Letter |

    By nesting a Kerr microresonator in a fibre loop with gain, 50-nm-wide bright microcavity-based soliton combs with a mode efficiency of 75% can be induced at average powers more than one order of magnitude lower than the Lugiato–Lefever soliton power threshold, facilitating real-world applications.

    • Hualong Bao
    • , Andrew Cooper
    •  & Alessia Pasquazi

  • Letter |

    Temporal dissipative soliton formation in a free-space femtosecond enhancement cavity with a thin Kerr medium is reported. Locking a 350-fs, 1,035-nm pulse train with a repetition rate of 100 MHz to this cavity-soliton state generates a 37-fs sech2-shaped pulse with a peak-power enhancement of 3,200.

    • N. Lilienfein
    • , C. Hofer
    •  & I. Pupeza

  • Letter |

    A microphotonic astrocomb is demonstrated via temporal dissipative Kerr solitons in photonic-chip-based silicon nitride microresonators with a precision of 25 cm s–1 (radial velocity equivalent), useful for Earth-like planet detection and cosmological research.

    • Ewelina Obrzud
    • , Monica Rainer
    •  & Tobias Herr

  • Letter |

    A soliton microcomb as an astronomical spectrograph calibrator is presented. It can ultimately have a footprint of a few cubic centimetres, and reduced weight and power consumption, attractive for precision radial velocity measurement.

    • Myoung-Gyun Suh
    • , Xu Yi
    •  & Kerry Vahala

  • News & Views |

    Spatial multiplexing enables the simultaneous generation of several low-noise frequency combs in a single microresonator, promising to enhance a host of applications such as multidimensional coherent spectroscopy.

    • Miro Erkintalo

  • Article |

    A broadband multi-frequency Fabry–Pérot laser diode, when coupled to a high-Q microresonator, can be efficiently transformed to an ~100 mW narrow-linewidth single-frequency light source, and subsequently, to a coherent soliton Kerr comb oscillator.

    • N. G. Pavlov
    • , S. Koptyaev
    •  & M. L. Gorodetsky

  • Article |

    Up to three distinct frequency combs are simultaneously generated from an optical microresonator and a continuous-wave laser, enabling the deployment of dual- and triple-comb-based methods to applications unachievable by current technologies.

    • E. Lucas
    • , G. Lihachev
    •  & T. J. Kippenberg

  • News & Views |

    The generation and manipulation of cavity solitons in microresonators is creating new opportunities for Kerr combs to aid applications such as optical communications and spectroscopy.

    • Andrew M. Weiner

  • Article |

    By driving a high-Q fibre-based Fabry–Pérot microresonator with periodic, picosecond optical pulses, deterministic generation of stable femtosecond dissipative cavity solitons has been experimentally realized.

    • Ewelina Obrzud
    • , Steve Lecomte
    •  & Tobias Herr

  • Letter |

    Counter-propagating solitons are generated in microresonator systems, producing dual-soliton frequency-comb streams with different repetition rates but high relative coherence useful for spectroscopy and laser ranging systems.

    • Qi-Fan Yang
    • , Xu Yi
    •  & Kerry Vahala

  • Review Article |

    Photonic time-stretch techniques and their applications are reviewed. The approach enables the observation of signals that are otherwise too short or rapid for conventional measurement.

    • Ata Mahjoubfar
    • , Dmitry V. Churkin
    •  & Bahram Jalali

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