Temporal cavity solitons (CSs) are persisting pulses of light that can manifest themselves in continuously driven passive resonators, such as macroscopic fiber ring cavities and monolithic microresonators. Experiments so far have demonstrated two tec
hniques for their excitation, yet both possess drawbacks in the form of system complexity or lack of control over soliton positioning. Here we experimentally demonstrate a new CS writing scheme that alleviates these deficiencies. Specifically, we show that temporal CSs can be excited at arbitrary positions through direct phase modulation of the cavity driving field, and that this technique also allows existing CSs to be selectively erased. Our results constitute the first experimental demonstration of temporal cavity soliton excitation via direct phase modulation, as well as their selective erasure (by any means). These advances reduce the complexity of CS excitation and could lead to controlled pulse generation in monolithic microresonators.
We examine a coherently-driven, dispersion-managed, passive Kerr fiber ring resonator and report the first direct experimental observation of dispersive wave emission by temporal cavity solitons. Our observations are in excellent agreement with analy
tical predictions and they are fully corroborated by numerical simulations. These results lead to a better understanding of the behavior of temporal cavity solitons under conditions where higher-order dispersion plays a significant role. Significantly, since temporal cavity solitons manifest themselves in monolithic microresonators, our results are likely to explain the origins of spectral features observed in broadband Kerr frequency combs.
We report what we believe is the weakest interaction between solitons ever observed. Our experiment involves temporal optical cavity solitons recirculating in a coherently-driven passive optical fibre ring resonator. We observe two solitons, separate
d by up to 8,000 times their width, changing their temporal separation by a fraction of an attosecond per round-trip of the 100 m-long resonator, or equivalently 1/10,000 of the wavelength of the soliton carrier wave per characteristic dispersive length. The interactions are so weak that, at the speed of light, they require an effective propagation distance of the order of an astronomical unit to fully develop, i.e. tens of millions of kilometres. The interaction is mediated by transverse acoustic waves generated in the optical fibre by the propagating solitons through electrostriction.
