Experimental Observation of Coexisting Differently Polarized Cavity Solitons in a Monochromatically Driven Passive Kerr Resonator

Abstract

Temporal cavity solitons (CSs) are pulses of light that can recirculate in coherently-driven, dispersive, Kerr resonators without changes in their shape or energy. They underpin applications such as fiber resonator all-optical buffers [1] and coherent microresonator frequency combs [2]. Because they are associated with a unique attractor of the underlying dynamical system, all CSs coexisting in a resonator are expected to be identical. However, studies have shown [2,3], that if two different cavity modes are simultaneously driven, nonidentical CSs can coexist. In [2], two orthogonal polarization modes were driven with a bichromatic field and coexistence of differently polarized nonidentical CSs was observed. According to [4], under certain conditions the same can be achieved using a monochromatic field, a prospect yet to be experimentally confirmed.