光学微腔中的耗散孤子

Dissipative solitons in optical microresonators

耗散孤子是一种通过耗散增益能量平衡、非线性与波传播的色散平衡形成的能量局域化结构,由于其形状、速度和强度在传播过程中表现出较强的稳定特性,常被应用于通讯、谱分析等相关应用.近年来,研究发现,光学微腔可以稳定且高效地产生耗散孤子,这种能够在片上集成装置产生的耗散孤子在通讯、双光梳光谱技术、频域校准和分析,以及远距离探测等方面都有着极大的应用优势.本综述从光学微腔中耗散孤子的耗散增益能量平衡以及非线性和波的色散平衡角度,分别对光学微腔中的耗散光孤子和光力微腔中耗散孤子的形成、发展和应用进行阐述,并对耗散孤子的进一步发展和应用进行展望.

A soliton is a stationary local structure that keeps its waveform and spreading speed during propagation. Recent research shows that chip-scale optical microresonators can support dissipative solitons with surprisingly high energy efficiency and stability. The formation of optical microresonator dissipative solitons requires two balances, gain-loss balance and dispersion-nonlinearity balance. The gain-loss balance maintains the soliton’s amplitude while the dispersion-nonlinearity balance keeps its width. In this paper, we review the formation, development, and applications of dissipative optical solitons, as well as dissipative mechanical solitons in optical microresonators, and analyze the balances in different solitons. This review mainly consists of two parts: Optical microresonator dissipative solitons and opto-mechanical microresonator dissipative solitons. The first part discusses a typical kind of solitons named dissipative Kerr solitons.Dissipative Kerr solitons balance the propagation dispersion through Kerr nonlinearity in optical microresonators and are widely studied due to their easy implementation in silicon-based microcavities. In order to improve the practical performance of dissipative Kerr solitons, researchers have proposed many schemes to improve their stability and efficiency. Meanwhile, various high-precision sensing applications based on dissipative Kerr solitons, such as photonic radar, range measurement, and absorption spectrum detection, have drawn extensive attention. The second part introduces the dissipative solitons in optomechanical microresonators. A recently-discovered type of solitons, optomechanical dissipative solitons, is introduced. Unlike the dissipative Kerr solitons, the optomechanical dissipative solitons gain their power from phonon lasing, and compensate the propagation dispersion by optomechanical nonlinearity. The dynamics of the optomechanical dissipative solitons are described by the modified Korteweg-de Vries equation. Low-frequency optomechanical dissipative solitons can achieve k Hz-accuracy acoustic signal measurement, which can be used in acoustic detection and communication. Finally, we summarize the formation, development, and applications of dissipative solitons in optomechanical microresonators. We also provide an outlook for future applications like radio-frequency calibration,radio-frequency communications, and underwater tomography.