Dissipative solitons in optical microresonators

Abstract

<p indent="0mm">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 kHz-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.