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Emergent nonlinear phenomena in a driven dissipative photonic dimer

Nature Physics volume 17, pages 604–610 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Collective effects leading to spatial, temporal or spatiotemporal pattern formation in complex nonlinear systems driven out of equilibrium cannot be described at the single-particle level and are therefore often called emergent phenomena. They are characterized by length scales exceeding the characteristic interaction length and by spontaneous symmetry breaking. Recent advances in integrated photonics have indicated that the study of emergent phenomena is possible in complex coupled nonlinear optical systems. Here we demonstrate that the out-of-equilibrium driving of a strongly coupled pair of photonic integrated Kerr microresonators (‘dimer’)—which, at the ‘single particle’ (that is, individual resonator) level, generate well-understood dissipative Kerr solitons—exhibits emergent nonlinear phenomena. By exploring the dimer phase diagram, we find regimes of soliton hopping, spontaneous symmetry breaking and periodically emerging (in)commensurate dispersive waves. These phenomena are not included in the single-particle description and are related to the parametric frequency conversion between the hybridized supermodes. Moreover, by electrically controlling the supermode hybridization, we achieve wide tunability of spectral interference patterns between the dimer solitons and dispersive waves. Our findings represent a step towards the study of emergent nonlinear phenomena in soliton networks and multimodal lattices.

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Fig. 1: DKS formation in single- and coupled-ring resonators.
Fig. 2: Emergent dynamics revealed by numerical simulations of the photonic dimer.
Fig. 3: Kerr comb reconstruction of the photonic dimer states.
Fig. 4: Electrical control of GSs and DW interference.

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Data availability

Source data are provided with this paper. All data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request as well as at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4291973.

Code availability

Numerical codes used in this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank A. Tusnin and M. Karpov for fruitful discussions. This publication was supported by contract 18AC00032 (DRINQS) from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Defense Sciences Office (DSO). This material is based on the work supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award no. FA9550-19-1-0250. This work was further supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme for Research and Innovation under grant no. 846737 (Marie Skłodowska-Curie IF CoSiLiS), 812818 (Marie Skłodowska-Curie ETN MICROCOMB), 722923 (Marie Skłodowska-Curie ETN OMT) and 732894 (FET Proactive HOT), and by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant agreement 192293. Si3N4 samples were fabricated and grown in the Center of MicroNanotechnology (CMi) at EPFL. Microheater integration was performed at the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center at IBM Research, Europe.

Author information

Author notes

  1. K. Komagata

    Present address: Laboratoire Temps-Fréquence, Institut de Physique, Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

  2. H. Guo

    Present address: Key Laboratory of Specialty Fiber Optics and Optical Access Networks, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Physics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

    A. Tikan, J. Riemensberger, K. Komagata, M. Churaev, C. Skehan, H. Guo, R. N. Wang, J. Liu & T. J. Kippenberg

  2. IBM Research Europe, Rïschlikon, Switzerland

    S. Hönl & P. Seidler

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Contributions

T.J.K. initiated the study. A.T. and K.K. developed the idea and performed theoretical and numerical analysis with the assistance of H.G. J.R., K.K. and M.C. performed the experiments and data analysis with the assistance of C.S. and A.T. Metal heaters were fabricated by S.H. R.N.W. and J.L. fabricated the Si3N4 samples. P.S. and T.J.K. supervised the project. A.T. and J.R. wrote the manuscript with contributions from all the authors.

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Correspondence to A. Tikan or T. J. Kippenberg.

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Peer review information Nature Physics thanks Aurélien Coillet and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Numerical reconstruction of the dimer phase space.

(left) Superposition of interactivity power traces. For every value of the pump power there are 10 interactivity power traces superimposed. (right) Three examples for three different pump powers: 0.9, 1.2 and 1.5 W.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Linear spectroscopy of the photonic dimers.

(a,b) Normalized frequency dependent transmission of top and bottom waveguides of a photonic dimer. (c) Superimposed echellogram of photonic dimer normalized waveguide transmissions. Successive transmission lines are recessed by the cavity free spectral range of 181.8 GHz, starting at 186 THz in the bottom and ending at 203 THz in the top. Avoided mode crossings (AMX), that is scattering into transverse higher-order dimer modes, are much stronger on the symmetric dimer mode (S mode, left parabola) than on the anti-symmetric dimer modes (AS, right parabola). (d,e) Zoomed in transmission traces of top and bottom waveguide transmissions with fitted coupling, detuning and loss parameters.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Experimental setup for Kerr combs reconstruction of the photonic dimer solitons.

(a) External cavity diode laser (ECDL); phase modulator (PM); erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA); Fiber polarization controller (FPC); Optical circulator (CIRC); Vector network analyzer (VNA); Fiber Bragg grating (FBG); Optical spectrum analyzer (OSA); Electrical spectrum analyzer (ESA); low-pass filter (LP); Logarithmic amplifier (LA); Sampling oscilloscope (OSC) (b) Optical spectrum measured with the grating-based optical spectrum analyser. (c) Calibrated Kerr comb reconstruction trace of long wavelength (red) and short wavelength (green) ECDL scans. (d) Zoom into the overlap region of the two laser scans. Grey area indicates spectral region highlighted in the panel below. (e) Kerr comb reconstruction spectrogram. The offset frequency marks the frequency difference of the incommensurable dispersive wave from the soliton frequency comb. (f) Zoom into offset regions around incommensurable dispersive waves (top and bottom) and soliton frequency comb. The spectral precision of Kerr comb reconstruction is limited by slow drifts of the pump laser and photonic dimer frequency.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Numerical investigation of the influence of the inter-resonator coupling dependence on the mode number.

Emergence of incommensurate dispersive waves is observed when the inter-resonator detuning is equal to zero which corresponds to the enhanced efficiency of the even inter-mode processes. (a) Power spectral density of the intraresonator field. (b) Supermode decomposition. (c) Reconstructed nonlinear dispersion relation.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Frequency dependent cavity dissipation and coupling rates of the photonic dimers.

Frequency-dependent results of photonic dimer fitting. (a,c) Loaded cavity loss rates κAS/2π and external κS/2π of symmetric and antisymmetric mode families for sample 1 and 2. (b,d) Linear coupling rate J and relative detuning δ of fundamental resonator modes for samples 1 and 2.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Sections 1–3 and Figs. 1–3.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Preprocessed data for the reconstruction of Fig. 1b.

Source Data Fig. 2

Preprocessed data for the reconstruction of Fig. 2b,e,f.

Source Data Fig. 3

Preprocessed data for the reconstruction of Fig. 3b,c,e.

Source Data Fig. 4

Preprocessed data for the reconstruction of Fig. 4b.

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Tikan, A., Riemensberger, J., Komagata, K. et al. Emergent nonlinear phenomena in a driven dissipative photonic dimer. Nat. Phys. 17, 604–610 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-01159-y

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