Abstract
External driving of passive, nonlinear optical resonators has emerged over the past decade as a novel route for the generation of ultrashort optical pulses and corresponding broadband frequency combs. Although the pulse formation dynamics in such systems dramatically differ from those manifesting themselves in conventional mode-locked lasers, the demarcation between the two traditionally distinct paradigms has recently begun to blur, with demonstrations of hybrid systems incorporating both external driving and active media shown to offer specific advantages. Here we explore a new pathway for ultrashort pulse generation at the interface of externally driven passive resonators and lasers. By leveraging the nonlinear Raman gain inherent in fused silica, we achieve the deterministic generation of low-noise dissipative solitons with durations well below 100 fs via the phase-coherent pulsed driving of resonators made of standard, commercially available optical fibre. We explore and explain the physics of the new dissipative Raman soliton states, identifying scaling laws that govern the pulses’ characteristics and that allow output repetition rates to be scaled at will without influencing the soliton duration. The scheme explored in our work enables the shortest-ever pulses generated in resonators (active or passive) made from a single commercially available optical fibre, to the best of our knowledge, and it has the potential to be transferred into a chip-scale format by using existing dispersion-engineered silica microresonators.
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Data availability
The data that support the plots within this paper and the other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge financial support from the Marsden Fund of the Royal Society Te Apārangi of New Zealand, the Development of National Major Scientific Research Instrument from National Natural Science Foundation of China (61927816), the Introduced Innovative Team Project of Guangdong Pearl River Talents Program (2021ZT09Z109) and the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2021B1515020074).
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Z.L. performed all of the experiments and most of the simulations with the help of Y.X. and M.E. S.S. performed numerical simulations of soliton characteristics. X. Wen, W.W., X. Wei and Z.Y. fabricated the dielectric mirrors used in the resonators. S.C. assisted with the analysis of results. S.G.M. helped to supervise the experiments and interpret the results. M.E. supervised the overall project and wrote the paper with Z.L.
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Li, Z., Xu, Y., Shamailov, S. et al. Ultrashort dissipative Raman solitons in Kerr resonators driven with phase-coherent optical pulses. Nat. Photon. 18, 46–53 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-023-01303-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-023-01303-z
