Solitons articles within Nature Physics

Featured

  • Perspective |

    Although topological photonics has been an active field of research for some time, most studies still focus on the linear optical regime. This Perspective summarizes recent investigations into the nonlinear properties of discrete topological photonic systems.

    • Alexander Szameit
    •  & Mikael C. Rechtsman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Measurements on a single artificial atom—a quantum dot—coupled to an optical cavity show scattering dynamics that depend on the number of photons involved in the light–matter interaction, which is a signature of stimulated emission.

    • Natasha Tomm
    • , Sahand Mahmoodian
    •  & Richard J. Warburton

  • Article |

    Interactions between photons arise due to the presence of optical nonlinearities. In topological Thouless pumps, a sufficiently strong nonlinearity leads to soliton transport with a fractionally quantized plateau structure—reminiscent of transport in the fractional quantum Hall effect.

    • Marius Jürgensen
    • , Sebabrata Mukherjee
    •  & Mikael C. Rechtsman

  • News & Views |

    Upon combining dissipative and nonlinear effects in a bipartite lattice of cavity polaritons, dissipatively stabilized bulk gap solitons emerge, which create a topological interface.

    • Flore K. Kunst

  • Article |

    Drive engineering in optical systems can be used to stabilize new nonlinear phases in topological systems. Dissipatively stabilized gap solitons in a polariton lattice establish drive engineering as a resource for nonlinear topological photonics.

    • Nicolas Pernet
    • , Philippe St-Jean
    •  & Jacqueline Bloch

  • News & Views |

    Solitary waves — solitons — occur in a wide range of physical systems with a broad array of attributes and applications. Carefully engineered light–matter interactions have now produced an optomechanical dissipative soliton with promising properties.

    • Alessia Pasquazi

  • News & Views |

    Light propagating in the topological edge channel of an array of ring resonators is predicted to generate nested frequency combs: like a Matryoshka doll containing a set of smaller dolls, each ‘tooth’ of the comb comprises another frequency comb.

    • Vittorio Peano

  • Article |

    Optical frequency combs are a key technology in precision time keeping, spectroscopy and metrology. A theoretical proposal shows that introducing topological principles into their design makes on-chip combs more efficient and robust against fabrication defects.

    • Sunil Mittal
    • , Gregory Moille
    •  & Mohammad Hafezi

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    The nonlinear properties of photonic topological insulators remain largely unexplored, as band topology is linked to linear systems. But nonlinear topological corner states and solitons can form in a second-order topological insulator, as shown by experiments.

    • Marco S. Kirsch
    • , Yiqi Zhang
    •  & Matthias Heinrich

  • Article |

    A pair of strongly coupled photonic microresonators shows nonlinear emergent behaviour, which can be understood by incorporating interactions in the theoretical description of nonlinear optical systems.

    • A. Tikan
    • , J. Riemensberger
    •  & T. J. Kippenberg

  • News & Views |

    Among the many reasons a signal may deviate from perfect periodicity, quantum-limited jitter is arguably the most fundamental. A clever experiment has now stripped away technical noise to unveil quantum-limited jitter of ultrafast soliton frequency combs.

    • Miro Erkintalo

  • Letter |

    Quantum jitter fundamentally limits the performance of microresonator frequency combs. The timing jitter of the solitons that generate the comb spectra is analysed, reaching the quantum limit and establishing fundamental limits for soliton microcombs.

    • Chengying Bao
    • , Myoung-Gyun Suh
    •  & Kerry J. Vahala

  • Article |

    A dissipative Kerr soliton crystal state is a temporally ordered regular ensemble of soliton pulses within a cavity. Chaotic driving of optical resonators enables the defect-free creation and dynamical characterization of these states.

    • Maxim Karpov
    • , Martin H. P. Pfeiffer
    •  & Tobias J. Kippenberg

  • Letter |

    Solitonic modes that are redshifted due to a Raman-related effect are reported in optical microcavities, and termed Stokes solitons.

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

  • News & Views |

    Light pulses with positive and negative effective masses are now generated using optical fibres. Nonlinear interactions between the two can then create self-accelerating pulse pairs, opening a new route to pulse steering.

    • Thomas Philbin

  • Letter |

    An action generates an equal and opposite reaction. If it were possible, however, for one of the two bodies to have negative mass, they would accelerate each other. A situation analogous to this is now realized in an optical system. Solitons moving in an optical mesh lattice exhibit either an effective positive or negative mass, thus enabling observation of self-acceleration.

    • Martin Wimmer
    • , Alois Regensburger
    •  & Ulf Peschel

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