Narrow-linewidth lasing and soliton Kerr microcombs with ordinary laser diodes

By N. Pavlov, S. Koptyaev, G. Lihachev, A. Voloshin, A. Gorodnitskiy, M. Ryabko, S. Polonsky, Michael L. Gorodetsky. Nature Photonics, 2018

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Narrow-linewidth lasers and optical frequency combs generated with mode-locked lasers have revolutionized optical frequency metrology. The advent of soliton Kerr frequency combs in compact crystalline or integrated ring optical microresonators has opened new horizons in academic research and industrial applications. These combs, as was naturally assumed, however, require narrow-linewidth, single-frequency pump lasers. We demonstrate that an ordinary cost-effective broadband Fabry–Pérot laser diode at the hundreds of milliwatts level, self-injection-locked to a microresonator, can be efficiently transformed to a powerful single-frequency, ultra-narrow-linewidth light source with further transformation to a coherent soliton comb oscillator. Our findings pave the way to the most compact and inexpensive highly coherent lasers, frequency comb sources, and comb-based devices for mass production.A broadband multi-frequency Fabry–Pérot laser diode, when coupled to a high-Q microresonator, can be efficiently transformed to an ~100 mW narrow-linewidth single-frequency light source, and subsequently, to a coherent soliton Kerr comb oscillator.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d0a61d965ad82582250e488f4cc4da32cce76bc5