Polarization-diverse soliton transitions and deterministic switching dynamics in strongly-coupled and self-stabilized microresonator frequency combs
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Dissipative Kerr soliton microcombs in microresonators have enabled fundamental advances in chip-scale precision metrology, communication, spectroscopy, and parallel signal processing. Here we demonstrate polarization-diverse soliton transitions and deterministic switching dynamics of a self-stabilized microcomb in a strongly-coupled dispersion-managed microresonator driven with a single pump laser. The switching dynamics are induced by the differential thermorefractivity between coupled transverse-magnetic and transverse-electric supermodes during the forward-backward pump detunings. The achieved large soliton existence range and deterministic transitions benefit from the switching dynamics, leading to the cross-polarized soliton microcomb formation when driven in the transverse-magnetic supermode of the single resonator. Secondly, we demonstrate two distinct polarization-diverse soliton formation routes – arising from chaotic or periodically-modulated waveforms via pump power selection. Thirdly, to observe the cross-polarized supermode transition dynamics, we develop a parametric temporal magnifier with picosecond resolution, MHz frame rate and sub-ns temporal windows. We construct picosecond temporal transition portraits in 100-ns recording length of the strongly-coupled solitons, mapping the transitions from multiple soliton molecular states to singlet solitons. This study underpins polarization-diverse soliton microcombs for chip-scale ultrashort pulse generation, supporting applications in frequency and precision metrology, communications, spectroscopy and information processing.
Source: Communications Physics
Institutions: University of California, Los Angeles, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Institute of Microelectronics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics
Language: English
Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,790
Awards: A terahertz spectrometer on a chip, at the thermodynamical limits, G1973065629, SpecEES: A spectrally-dense 650-GHz photonic wireless backhaul via secure network coding, EFRI ACQUIRE: A chip-scale high-dimensional entanglement and quantum memory module for secure communications, G6299404813, NRT-HDR: Modeling and Understanding Human Behavior: Harnessing Data from Genes to Social Networks, G8876996369
OpenAlex ID: W4401665222