Athermal third harmonic generation in micro‐ring resonators

Nonlinear high-harmonic generation in micro-resonators is a common technique used to extend the operating range of applications such as self-referencing systems and coherent communications in the visible region.However,the generated high-harmonic emissions are subject to a resonance shift with a change in temperature.We present a comprehensive study of the thermal behavior induced phase mismatch that shows this resonance shift can be compensated by a combination of the linear and nonlinear thermo-optics effects.Using this model,we predict and experimentally demonstrate visible third harmonic modes having temperature dependent wavelength shifts between−2.84 pm/ºC and 2.35 pm/ºC when pumped at the L-band.Besides providing a new way to achieve athermal operation,this also allows one to measure the thermal coefficients and Q-factor of the visible modes.Through steady state analysis,we have also identified the existence of stable athermal third harmonic generation and experimentally demonstrated orthogonally pumped visible third harmonic modes with a temperature dependent wavelength shift of 0.05 pm/ºC over a temperature range of 12ºC.Our findings promise a configurable and active temperature dependent wavelength shift compensation scheme for highly efficient and precise visible emission generation for potential 2f–3f self-referencing in metrology,biological and chemical sensing applications.

Atom-referenced and stabilized soliton microcomb

For the applications of the frequency comb in microresonators,it is essential to obtain a fully frequency-stabilized microcomb laser source.In this study,we present a system for generating a fully atom-referenced stabilized soliton microcomb.The pump light around 1560.48 nm is locked to an ultra-low-expansion(ULE)cavity.This pump light is then frequency-doubled and referenced to the atomic transition of87Rb.The repetition rate of the soliton microcomb is injection-locked to an atomic-clockstabilized radio frequency(RF)source,leading to mHz stabilization at 1 s.As a result,all comb lines have been frequencystabilized based on the atomic reference and the ULE cavity,achieving a very high precision of approximately 18 Hz at 1 s,corresponding to the frequency stability of 9.5×10^(-14).Our approach provides a fully stabilized microcomb experiment scheme with no requirement of f-2f technique,which could be easily implemented and generalized to various photonic platforms,thus paving the way towards the ultraprecise optical sources for high precision spectroscopy.

Hyperbolic resonant radiation of concomitant microcombs induced by cross-phase modulation

A high-quality optical microcavity can enhance optical nonlinear effects by resonant recirculation,which provides a reliable platform for nonlinear optics research.When a soliton microcomb and a probe optical field are coexisting in a micro-resonator,a concomitant microcomb(CMC)induced by cross-phase modulation(XPM)will be formed synchronously.Here,we characterize the CMC comprehensively in a micro-resonator through theory,numerical simulation,and experimental verification.It is found that the CMCs spectra are modulated due to resonant radiation(RR)resulting from the interaction of dispersion and XPM effects.The group velocity dispersion induces symmetric RRs on the CMC,which leads to a symmetric spectral envelope and a dual-peak pulse in frequency and temporal domains,respectively,while the group velocity mismatch breaks the symmetry of RRs and leads to asymmetric spectral and temporal profiles.When the group velocity is linearly varying with frequency,two RR frequencies are hyperbolically distributed about the pump,and the probe light acts as one of the asymptotic lines.Our results enrich the CMC dynamics and guide microcomb design and applications such as spectral extension and dark pulse generation.

Program-controlled single soliton microcomb source

Soliton microcombs(SMCs)are spontaneously formed in a coherently pumped high-quality microresonator,which provides a new tool for use as an on-chip frequency comb for applications of high-precision metrology and spectroscopy.However,generation of SMCs seriously relies on advanced experimental techniques from professional scientists.Here,we experimentally demonstrate a program-controlled single SMC source where the intracavity thermal effect is timely balanced using an auxiliary laser during single SMC generation.The microcomb power is adopted as the criteria for microcomb states discrimination and a forward and backward thermal tuning technique is employed for the deterministic single SMC generation.Further,based on a closed-loop control system,the repetition rate stability of the SMC source improved more than 20 times and the pump frequency can be continuously tuned by simply changing the operation temperature.The reliability of the SMC source is verified by consecutive 200 generation trials and maintaining over 10 h.We believe the proposed SMC source will have significant promising influences in future SMC-based application development.

CMOS-compatible high-index doped silica waveguide with an embedded silicon-nanocrystal strip for all-optical analog-to-digital conversion

Passive all-optical signal processors that overcome the electronic bottleneck can potentially be the enabling components for the next-generation high-speed and lower power consumption systems. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a CMOS-compatible waveguide and its application to the all-optical analog-to-digital converter(ADC) under the nonlinear spectral splitting and filtering scheme. As the key component of the proposed ADC, a 50 cm long high-index doped silica glass spiral waveguide is composed of a thin silicon-nanocrystal(Si-nc) layer embedded in the core center for enhanced nonlinearity. The device simultaneously possesses low loss(0.16 dB/cm at 1550 nm), large nonlinearity(305 W^-1∕km at 1550 nm), and negligible nonlinear absorption.A 2-bit ADC basic unit is achieved when pumped by the proposed waveguide structure at the telecom band and without any additional amplification. Simulation results that are consistent with the experimental ones are also demonstrated, which further confirm the feasibility of the proposed scheme for larger quantization resolution.This demonstrated approach enables a fully monolithic solution for all-optical ADC in the future, which can digitize broadband optical signals directly at low power consumption. This has great potential on the applications of high-speed optical communications, networks, and signal processing systems.

Terabit FSO communication based on a soliton microcomb

Free-space optical(FSO)communication technology is a promising approach to establish a secure wireless link,which has the advantages of excellent directionality,large bandwidth,multiple services,low mass and less power requirements,and easy and fast deployments.Increasing the communication capacity is the perennial goal in both scientific and engineer communities.In this paper,we experimentally demonstrate a Tbit/s parallel FSO communication system using a soliton microcomb as a multiple wavelength laser source.Two communication terminals are installed in two buildings with a straight-line distance of~1 km.102 comb lines are modulated by10 Gbit/s differential phase-shift keying signals and demodulated using a delay-line interferometer.When the transmitted optical power is amplified to 19.8 dBm,42 optical channels have optical signal-to-noise ratios higher than 27 dB and bit error rates less than 1×10^(-9).Our experiment shows the feasibility of a wavelength-division multiplexing FSO communication system which suits the ultra-high-speed wireless transmission application scenarios in future satellite-based communications,disaster recovery,defense,last mile problems in networks and remote sensing,and so on.

Scanning dual-microcomb spectroscopy

Dual-comb spectroscopy(DCS) is a powerful tool in molecular spectroscopy benefiting from the advantages of high resolution and short measurement time. The recently developed soliton microcomb(SMC) can potentially transfer the dual-comb method to an on-chip platform. In this paper, we demonstrate DCS using two frequency scanning SMCs, termed scanning dual-microcomb spectroscopy(SDMCS). The two SMCs are generated by an auxiliary-assisted thermal balance scheme, and the pump laser frequency sweeps over one free spectral range of the microresonator(~49 GHz) using a feedback control system. The proposed SDMCS has a spectral resolution of 12.5 MHz, which is determined by the minimum sweeping step of the pump laser. Using this SDMCS system, we perform three types of gas molecule absorption spectroscopy recognition and gas concentration detection.This study paves the way for integrated DCS with a high signal-to-noise ratio, high spectral resolution, and fast acquisition rate.

Scalable parallel ultrafast optical random bit generation based on a single chaotic microcomb

Random bit generators are critical for information security,cryptography,stochastic modeling,and simulations.Speed and scalability are key challenges faced by current physical random bit generation.Herein,we propose a massively parallel scheme for ultrafast random bit generation towards rates of order 100 terabit per second based on a single micro-ring resonator.A modulation-instability-driven chaotic comb in a micro-ring resonator enables the simultaneous generation of hundreds of independent and unbiased random bit streams.A proof-of-concept experiment demonstrates that using our method,random bit streams beyond 2 terabit per second can be successfully generated with only 7 comb lines.This bit rate can be easily enhanced by further increasing the number of comb lines used.Our approach provides a chip-scale solution to random bit generation for secure communication and high-performance computation,and offers superhigh speed and large scalability.