Soliton crystals in Kerr resonators

By D. Cole, E. S. Lamb, P. Del’Haye, Scott A. Diddams, S. Papp. 2016

484 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Self-organized solitons confined to an optical resonator would offer unique capabilities for experiments in communication, computation and sensing with light. Here, we report the observation of soliton crystals in monolithic Kerr microresonators—spontaneously and collectively ordered ensembles of co-propagating solitons whose interactions discretize their allowed temporal separations. We unambiguously identify and characterize soliton crystals through analysis of their ‘fingerprint’ optical spectra, which arise from spectral interference between the solitons. We identify a rich space of soliton crystals exhibiting crystallographic defects and we perform time-domain measurements to directly confirm our inference of their crystal structure. Soliton crystallization is explained by long-range soliton interactions mediated by resonator mode degeneracies, and we probe the qualitative difference between soliton crystals and the disorganized soliton liquid that would form in the absence of these interactions. Our work explores the physics of monolithic Kerr resonators in a regime of dense soliton occupation and offers a way to increase the efficiency of Kerr combs. Furthermore, the extreme degeneracy of the configuration space of soliton crystals suggests an implementation for an on-chip optical buffer.The observation of soliton crystals in monolithic Kerr microresonators is reported. The physics of such resonators is explored in a regime of dense soliton occupation, offering a way to increase the efficiency of Kerr combs.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Computer Networks and Communications, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bc8ae88dbc2901d50660632fbdccd3a781c8fabf

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

Citations in the corpus

Broadband Photonic RF Channelizer With 92 Channels Based on a Soliton Crystal Microcomb (2020, background): “The curtain-like spectrum was a result of the interference between the tightly-packaged solitons circulating along the ring cavity [55], [56].”
Microcomb-Based Photonic RF Signal Processing (2019, background): “from spectral interference between tightly packed solitons in the cavity — so called “soliton crystals” [18].”
Microwave and RF Photonic Fractional Hilbert Transformer Based on a 50 GHz Kerr Micro-Comb (2019, background): “crystal combs with distinctive ‘fingerprint’ optical spectra were observed, which arose from spectral interference between tightly packaged solitons in the cavity [29].”
Photonic microwave true time delays for phased array antennas using a 49 GHz FSR integrated optical micro-comb source [Invited] (2018, background): “In fact, both the shape and stability of our comb, we believe, are indicative of possible operation in multiple soliton states, such as recently reported soliton crystals [62].”
A self-starting bi-chromatic LiNbO3 soliton microcomb (2018, background): “First observed in optical fiber systems [12] these coherently pumped solitons [13] have now been demonstrated in microresonators made from magnesium fluoride [11, 14, 15], silica [16, 17], silicon [18], and silicon nitride [15, 19–22].”
Photonic RF Phase-Encoded Signal Generation With a Microcomb Source (2020, methodology): “We generated soliton crystal microcombs [34], [35], which were”
Optical data transmission at 44Tb/s and 10 bits/s/Hz over the C-band with standard fibre and a single micro-comb source (2020, methodology): “Here, by using a new and powerful class of micro-comb called “soliton crystals” [11], we achieve unprecedented data transmission over standard optical fibre using a single integrated chip source.”