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Counter-propagating solitons in microresonators

Nature Photonics volume 11, pages 560–564 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Solitons occur in many physical systems when a nonlinearity compensates wave dispersion. Their recently demonstrated formation in microresonators has opened a new research direction for nonlinear optical physics1,2,3,4,5. Soliton mode locking also endows frequency microcombs with the enhanced stability necessary for miniaturization of spectroscopy and frequency metrology systems6. These microresonator solitons orbit around a closed waveguide path and produce a repetitive output pulse stream at a rate set by the roundtrip time. Here, counter-propagating solitons that simultaneously orbit in an opposing sense (clockwise/counter-clockwise) are studied. Despite sharing the same spatial mode family, their roundtrip times can be precisely and independently controlled. Furthermore, a state is possible in which both the relative optical phase and relative repetition rates of the distinct soliton streams are locked. This state allows a single resonator to produce dual-soliton frequency-comb streams with different repetition rates, but with a high relative coherence that is useful in both spectroscopy7,8,9 and laser ranging systems10.

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Figure 1: Observation of CP solitons.
Figure 2: CP solitons with independently tuned repetition rates.
Figure 3: CP soliton phase locking at different repetition rates.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under the PULSE (grant no. W31P4Q-14-1-0001) and SCOUT (contract no. W911NF-16-1-0548) programmes, NASA and the Kavli Nanoscience Institute.

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Author notes

  1. Qi-Fan Yang and Xu Yi: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. T. J. Watson Laboratory of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA

    Qi-Fan Yang, Xu Yi, Ki Youl Yang & Kerry Vahala

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Contributions

Experiments were conceived by Q.-F.Y., X.Y., K.Y.Y. and K.V. Analysis of results was conducted by Q.-F.Y., X.Y., K.Y.Y. and K.V. Q.-F.Y. and X.Y. performed measurements. K.Y.Y. fabricated devices. All authors participated in writing the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kerry Vahala.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Yang, QF., Yi, X., Yang, K. et al. Counter-propagating solitons in microresonators. Nature Photon 11, 560–564 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2017.117

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