Turing patterns in a fiber laser with a nested microresonator: Robust and controllable microcomb generation

Hualong Bao,Luana Olivieri,Marco Peccianti,Roberto Morandotti,Juan Sebastian Totero Gongora,Brent E Little,Maxwell Rowley,Alessia Pasquazi,Sai T Chu,David J Moss

doi:10.1103/physrevresearch.2.023395

Abstract

The paper study the formation of microcomb Turing patterns in a system comprised of a micro-resonator nested in an amplifying laser cavity. The authors show a method for repetition rate control of these waves over both fine and large scales.

Highlights

The formation of patterns in nonlinear dissipative systems is ubiquitous in nature [1]
We examine the range of parameters for which it is possible to select the repetition rate for some multiple of the microcavity free-spectral range (FSR) [48] and show that it can, be continuously tuned by up to 10 MHz
The analysis reported here, is focused on explaining the nature of the stationary states and the ultrafast wave dynamics, such as modulational instability (MI), which are instrumental in defining the different types of stable states

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The formation of patterns in nonlinear dissipative systems is ubiquitous in nature [1]. The temporal study of such patterns in bistable optical systems [10,11,12,13,14,15] has received increasing attention in the past decade, in part due to the strong drive to develop optical frequency combs based on microcavities [16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26], referred to as “microcombs.” Typical implementations of such microcomb sources involve externally driving a nonlinear Kerr cavity with a continuous wave (cw) laser. In the normal dispersion regime, local mode hybridization has been implemented to enhance the pump conversion efficiency by increasing the region of existence of the Turing patterns, avoiding the emergence of subcombs [40] This technique has demonstrated combs with a fractional frequency nonuniformity measured at 7.3 × 10−14 with a 1-s time gate and allows one to design a sample that produces an oscillator with a single well-defined repetition-rate. We verify experimentally continuous tuning of up to 10 MHz and Turing pattern generation with repetition rate of approximately 100, 150, and 200 GHz

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

EXPERIMENTAL IMPLEMENTATION

Turing pattern selection via the Vernier effect

Fine-Tuning and Phase Locking of the Turing patterns