Optical frequency comb sources can emit perfectly periodic and coherent optical waveforms, and are rapidly developing towards chip level integrated solutions. There are two particularly important types: semiconductor Fabry Perot lasers and passive ring Kerr microresonators.
Recently, Nikola Opa č ak, Benedikt Schwarz, and others from the Technical University of Vienna (TU Wien) in Austria published a paper in Nature that combines these two technologies in a ring semiconductor laser and demonstrates an example of free running soliton formation, called the Nozaki Bekki soliton. These dissipative waveforms appear in local dark pulses propagated by a family and are known in the complex Ginzburg Landau equation.
Research has shown that in ring lasers, Nozaki Bekki solitons are structurally stable and spontaneously form with tuning of laser bias, thereby avoiding external optical pumping. Based on experimental findings and theoretical models, significant characteristics of these solitons were also revealed, providing guidance for their generation. In addition to the fundamental solitons circulating within the ring laser, multiple soliton states were demonstrated, the localization properties were verified, and a deeper understanding of soliton crystal formation was provided.
This result consolidates the single-chip electric drive platform that directly generates solitons and opens the door to the interdisciplinary research field of laser multimode dynamics and Kerr parametric processes.
Figure 1: Complex Ginzburg Landau equation with corresponding laser states, CGLE parameter space
Figure 2: Experimental and theoretical characterization of basic Nozaki Bekki, NB solitons in a single ring laser.
Figure 3: Multiple soliton states.
Figure 4: Coherent control of NB soliton states.
Editor:Sichuan Jinzhongde Science and Technology Research Institute
Source: Today's New Materials
