Dark-Bright Soliton Bound States in a Microresonator

Area of Science:

• Optics and Photonics
• Nonlinear Optics
• Microresonator Science

Background:

• Dissipative Kerr solitons in microresonators enable chip-scale frequency combs.
• Dark soliton pulses have been observed in microresonators within the normal dispersion regime.

Purpose of the Study:

• To report the generation and characteristics of bound states of mutually trapped dark-bright soliton pairs in a microresonator.
• To explore a novel mechanism for generating dark soliton pulses through cross-phase modulation.

Main Methods:

• Experimental generation of soliton pairs by seeding two modes with opposite dispersion and similar group velocities.
• Utilizing two lasers operating in anomalous and normal dispersion regimes.
• Numerical simulations to validate experimental findings and elucidate the generation mechanism.

Main Results:

• Successfully generated bound states of dark-bright soliton pairs in a microresonator.
• Demonstrated a novel mechanism for dark soliton generation via Kerr-induced cross-phase modulation.
• Observed that trapped soliton pairs can exhibit constant output power while spectrally resembling a frequency comb.

Conclusions:

• The trapping of dark and bright solitons presents a new avenue for generating dark soliton pulses.
• These findings have potential applications in telecommunication systems, frequency comb technology, and ultrafast optics.
• The unique properties of these bound states warrant further investigation for advanced optical applications.