Observation of dissipative Kerr soliton evolution with panoramic-reconstruction temporal imaging (PARTI)

Abstract

Single-shot real-time characterization of optical waveforms with sub-picosecond resolution is essential for investigating various ultrafast optical dynamics. However, the finite temporal record length of current techniques hinders comprehensive understanding of many intriguing ultrafast optical phenomena that evolve over a time scale much longer than their fine temporal details. Inspired by the space-time duality and by stitching of multiple microscopic images to achieve a larger field of view in the spatial domain, here a panoramic-reconstruction temporal imaging (PARTI) system is devised to realize scalable temporal record length without sacrificing the resolution. As a proof-of-concept demonstration, the PARTI system is applied to study the dynamic waveforms of slowly-evolved dissipative Kerr solitons in an ultrahigh-g microresonator.