Temporal cavity solitons in one-dimensional Kerr media as bits in an all-optical buffer

Abstract

Using standard silica optical fibres, scientists observe temporal cavity solitons — packets of light persisting in a continuously driven nonlinear resonator. Cavity solitons 4 ps long are reported and used to demonstrate storage of a data stream for more than a second. The findings represent one of the simplest examples of self-organization phenomena in nonlinear optics.