Kerr Frequency Comb Generation and Soliton Dynamics Caused by Forward-Backward Wave Interaction in WGM Microresonators

Abstract

In recent years, optical microresonators, including whispering gallery modes (WGM) microresonators, have found wide application in various fields of science and technology. For example, high quality factor (high-Q) optical microresonators represent the most promising platform for the creation of miniature, energy-efficient components of optoelectronics, photonics and radiophotonics, with a speed exceeding traditional electronic components. In addition, the high-quality factor and the relatively small effective volume of the localization of the optical field significantly reduce the threshold for the manifestation of various nonlinear effects, which has made WGM microresonators a unique platform for investigating various nonlinear optical effects. A significant breakthrough was the discovery of the possibility of generation of Kerr frequency combs and dissipative Kerr solitons in microresonators [1]. Besides that the coupling of high-Q microresonator with a laser contributes to the stabilization of the laser and to a decrease of the width of its generation line via the self-injection locking effect [2, 3]. Recently it was demonstrated the generation of dissipative Kerr solitons by the multi-frequency laser self-injection locked by high-Q microresonator [4]. Interestingly, that predominantly single-soliton regime was obtained without any additional efforts. However there is no full theory of this phenomenon.