Phys.org August 29, 2023
While conventional optical frequency combs are generated using mode-locked lasers that tend to be constrained to high-end scientific laboratories, there has been recent work to develop optical frequency combs using compact, chip-scale microresonators based on dissipative Kerr solitons (DKSs) which consume very little energy, they also do not produce enough output power to be useful. A team of researchers in the US (NIST, University of Maryland) harnessed the newly proposed Kerr-induced synchronization of Kerr solitons to an external stable laser reference to produce optical frequency combs with substantial increase of power on the other side of the comb spectrum from the reference laser. They demonstrated that an external reference pump at 193 THz allowed for the repetition rate tuning of an octave-spanning comb enabling tuning of the phase-matching condition of the comb tooth at the dispersive wave in a way that optimized its power and demonstrated a more than 15-fold power increase at the 388 THz comb tooth. Their paper will be presented at Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science (FiO LS), which will be held 9–12 October 2023…read more.
Researchers have shown that dissipative Kerr solitons (DKSs) can be used to create chip-based optical frequency combs… Credit: Grégory Moille, Joint Quantum Institute, NIST/University of Maryland