No Arabic abstract
High-Q microresonator has been suggested a promising platform for optical frequency comb generation, via dissipative soliton formation. To achieve a higher Q and obtain the necessary anomalous dispersion, $Si_3N_4$ microresonators made of multi-mode waveguides were previously implemented. However, coupling between different transverse mode families in the multi-mode waveguides results in periodic disruption of dispersion and quality factor, introducing perturbation to dissipative soliton formation and amplitude modulation to the corresponding spectrum. Careful choice of pump wavelength to avoid the mode crossing region is thus critical in conventional $Si_3N_4$ microresonators. Here, we report a novel design of $Si_3N_4$ microresonator such that single mode operation, high quality factor, and anomalous dispersion are attained simultaneously. The microresonator is consisted of uniform single mode waveguides in the semi-circle region, to eliminate bending induced mode coupling, and adiabatically tapered waveguides in the straight region, to avoid excitation of higher order modes. The intrinsic Q of the microresonator reaches $1.36 times 10^6$ while the GVD remains to be anomalous at $-50 fs^2/mm$. We demonstrate, with this novel microresonator, broadband phase-locked Kerr frequency combs with flat and smooth spectra can be generated by pumping at any resonances in the optical C-band.
Using numerical simulations of an extended Lugiato-Lefever equation, we analyze the stability and nonlinear dynamics of Kerr frequency combs generated in microresonators and fiber resonators taking into account third-order dispersion effects. We show that cavity solitons underlying Kerr frequency combs, normally sensitive to oscillatory and chaotic instabilities, are stabilized in a wide range of parameter space by third-order dispersion. Moreover, we demonstrate how the snaking structure organizing compound states of multiple cavity solitons is qualitatively changed by third-order dispersion, promoting an increased stability of Kerr combs underlined by a single cavity soliton.
Kerr optical frequency combs with multi-gigahertz spacing have previously been demonstrated in chip-scale microresonators, with potential applications in coherent communication, spectroscopy, arbitrary waveform generation, and radio frequency photonic oscillators. In general, the harmonics of a frequency comb are identically polarized in a single microresonator. In this work, we report that one comb in one polarization is generated by an orthogonally polarized soliton comb and two low-noise, orthogonally polarized combs interact with each other and exist simultaneously in a single microresonator. The second comb generation is attributed to the strong cross-phase modulation with the orthogonally polarized soliton comb and the high peak power of the intracavity soliton pulse. Experimental results show that a second frequency comb is excited even when a continuous wave light as a seed-with power as low as 0.1 mW-is input, while its own power level is below the threshold of comb generation. Moreover, the second comb has a concave envelope, which is different from the sech2 envelope of the soliton comb. This is due to the frequency mismatch between the harmonics and the resonant frequency. We also find that the repetition rates of these two combs coincide, although two orthogonal resonant modes are characterized by different free spectral ranges.
Microresonator-based Kerr frequency comb (microcomb) generation can potentially revolutionize a variety of applications ranging from telecommunications to optical frequency synthesis. However, phase-locked microcombs have generally had low conversion efficiency limited to a few percent. Here we report experimental results that achieve ~30% conversion efficiency (~200 mW on-chip comb power excluding the pump) in the fiber telecommunication band with broadband mode-locked dark-pulse combs. We present a general analysis on the efficiency which is applicable to any phase-locked microcomb state. The effective coupling condition for the pump as well as the duty cycle of localized time-domain structures play a key role in determining the conversion efficiency. Our observation of high efficiency comb states is relevant for applications such as optical communications which require high power per comb line.
The 1-10 terahertz (THz) spectral window is emerging as a key region for plenty of applications, requiring not yet available continuous-wave room-temperature THz spectrometers with high spectral purity and ultra-broad tunability. In this regard, the spectral features of stabilized telecom sources can actually be transferred to the THz range by difference frequency generation, considering that the width of the accessible THz spectrum generally scales with the area involved in the nonlinear interaction. For this reason, in this paper we extensively discuss the role of Lithium Niobate (LN) channel waveguides in the experimental accomplishment of a room-temperature continuous wave (CW) spectrometer, with uW-range power levels and a spectral coverage of up to 7.5 THz.To this purpose, and looking for further improvements, a thought characterization of specially-designed LN waveguides is presented, whilst discussing its nonlinear efficiency and its unprecedented capability to handle high optical power (10 7 W/cm 2 ), on the basis of a three-wave-mixing theoretical model.
We use numerical simulations based on an extended Lugiato-Lefever equation (LLE) to investigate the stability properties of Kerr frequency combs generated in microresonators. In particular, we show that an ensemble average calculated over sequences of output fields separated by a fixed number of resonator roundtrips allows the coherence of Kerr combs to be quantified in terms of the complex-degree of first-order coherence. We identify different regimes of comb coherence, linked to the solutions of the LLE. Our approach provides a practical and unambiguous way of assessing the stability of Kerr combs that is directly connected to an accessible experimental quantity.