Oscillatory motion of a counterpropagating Kerr soliton dimer
Abstract
Counterpropagating (CP) solitons generated in high-Q microcavities not only offer useful dual-comb sources, but also provide a new platform to study soliton interactions. Here, we demonstrate and theoretically explain a manifestation of soliton trapping that occurs between CP solitons in a silica microcavity introducing a Kerr soliton dimer. In conventional soliton trapping, the group velocities of two solitons can be synchronized by a Kerr-effect-mediated interaction. The solitons can then copropagate with a fixed temporal delay. However, as shown here, when counterpumping a microcavity using slightly detuned pump frequencies and in the presence of backscattering, the group velocities of clockwise and counterclockwise solitons undergo periodic modulation instead of being locked to a constant velocity. Upon emission from the microcavity, the solitons feature a relative oscillatory motion around a locked average relative displacement with an amplitude that can be larger than the soliton pulse width. This relative motion introduces a sideband fine structure into the optical spectrum of the CP solitons. Our observation provides insights on coherently pumped soliton dimers in microcavities.
Additional Information
© 2021 American Physical Society. Received 25 February 2020; revised 15 December 2020; accepted 18 December 2020; published 6 January 2021. This work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant No. FA9550-18-1-0353) and the Kavli Nanoscience Institute. C.B. gratefully acknowledges the postdoctoral fellowship from the Resnick Sustainability Institute at Caltech. The research performed by A.M. was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (No. 80NM0018D0004). We thank Qi-Fan Yang for helpful discussion.Attached Files
Published - PhysRevA.103.L011501.pdf
Submitted - 2003.00573.pdf
Supplemental Material - Forced_Motion_SI.pdf
Files
Additional details
- Alternative title
- Forced Oscillatory Motion of Trapped Counter-Propagating Solitons
- Eprint ID
- 102659
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20200420-125418330
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
- FA9550-18-1-0353
- Kavli Nanoscience Institute
- Resnick Sustainability Institute
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- 80NM0018D0004
- Created
-
2020-04-20Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2023-06-02Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Kavli Nanoscience Institute, Resnick Sustainability Institute