Microresonator-based solitons for massively parallel coherent optical communications

By P. Marin-Palomo, J. Kemal, Maxim Karpov, A. Kordts, J. Pfeifle, Martin Hubert Peter Pfeiffer, P. Trocha, S. Wolf, Victor Brasch, M. Anderson and 5 more. Nature, 2016

1,182 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Solitons are waveforms that preserve their shape while propagating, as a result of a balance of dispersion and nonlinearity. Soliton-based data transmission schemes were investigated in the 1980s and showed promise as a way of overcoming the limitations imposed by dispersion of optical fibres. However, these approaches were later abandoned in favour of wavelength-division multiplexing schemes, which are easier to implement and offer improved scalability to higher data rates. Here we show that solitons could make a comeback in optical communications, not as a competitor but as a key element of massively parallel wavelength-division multiplexing. Instead of encoding data on the soliton pulse train itself, we use continuous-wave tones of the associated frequency comb as carriers for communication. Dissipative Kerr solitons (DKSs) (solitons that rely on a double balance of parametric gain and cavity loss, as well as dispersion and nonlinearity) are generated as continuously circulating pulses in an integrated silicon nitride microresonator via four-photon interactions mediated by the Kerr nonlinearity, leading to low-noise, spectrally smooth, broadband optical frequency combs. We use two interleaved DKS frequency combs to transmit a data stream of more than 50 terabits per second on 179 individual optical carriers that span the entire telecommunication C and L bands (centred around infrared telecommunication wavelengths of 1.55 micrometres). We also demonstrate coherent detection of a wavelength-division multiplexing data stream by using a pair of DKS frequency combs—one as a multi-wavelength light source at the transmitter and the other as the corresponding local oscillator at the receiver. This approach exploits the scalability of microresonator-based DKS frequency comb sources for massively parallel optical communications at both the transmitter and the receiver. Our results demonstrate the potential of these sources to replace the arrays of continuous-wave lasers that are currently used in high-speed communications. In combination with advanced spatial multiplexing schemes and highly integrated silicon photonic circuits, DKS frequency combs could bring chip-scale petabit-per-second transceivers into reach.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/563ca7fa7741efc072025528bd8e5c7d0dbfd6b0

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Nonlinear photonics with high-Q whispering-gallery-mode resonators (2017, methodology): “The use of Kerr solitons has recently permitted an impressive leapfrog improvement toward a 50Tbit/s performance [230].”
A self-starting bi-chromatic LiNbO3 soliton microcomb (2018, background): “S3, the frequency response of photorefraction is fairly complicated with potential multi-scale time responses [4].”
High-efficiency and broadband on-chip electro-optic frequency comb generators (2021, positive): “For example, an already demonstrated 100-fold improvement in comb efficiency can lead to a 20 dB increase in the signal-to-noise ratio of frequency-multiplexed applications such as optical communications 1 .”
Dissipative Kerr solitons in optical microresonators (2018, methodology): “Kerr combs with hundreds of equally spaced lines can serve as a reference for wavelength division multiplexing in massively parallel coherent telecommunications, with demonstrated data rates exceeding 50 terabits per second, at both the receiver and transmitter ends (44).”