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* These authors contributed equally
Here, we present a protocol to generate soliton crystals in a butterfly-packaged micro-ring resonator using a thermal tuned method. Further, the repetition rate fluctuations of a soliton crystal with a single vacancy are measured using a delayed self-heterodyne method.
Temporal solitons have attracted great interest in the past decades for their behavior in a steady state, where the dispersion is balanced by the nonlinearity in a propagation Kerr medium. The development of dissipative Kerr solitons (DKSs) in high-Q microcavities drives a novel, compact, chip-scale soliton source. When DKSs serve as femtosecond pulses, the repetition rate fluctuation can be applied to ultrahigh precision metrology, high-speed optical sampling, and optical clocks, etc. In this paper, the rapid repetition rate fluctuation of soliton crystals (SCs), a special state of DKSs where particle-like solitons are tightly packed and fully occupy a resonator, is measured based on the well-known delayed self-heterodyne method. The SCs are generated using a thermal-controlled method. The pump is a frequency fixed laser with a linewidth of 100 Hz. The integral time in frequency fluctuation measurements is controlled by the length of the delay fiber. For a SC with a single vacancy, the repetition rate fluctuations are ~53.24 Hz within 10 µs and ~509.32 Hz within 125 µs, respectively.
The steady DKSs in microresonators, where the cavity dispersion is balanced by Kerr nonlinearity, as well as the Kerr gain and cavity dissipation1, have attracted great interest in the scientific research community for their ultra-high repetition rate, compact size, and low cost2. In the time domain, DKSs are stable pulse trains that have been used for high-speed ranging measurement3 and molecular spectroscopy4. In the frequency domain, DKSs have a series of frequency lines with equal frequency spacing that are suitable for wavelength-division-multiplex (WDM) communications systems5,6, optical frequency synthesis7,8, and ultra-low noise microwave generation9,10, etc. The phase noise or linewidth of comb lines directly affects the performance of these application systems. It has been proven that all the comb lines have a similar linewidth with the pump11. Therefore, using an ultra-narrow linewidth laser as a pump is an effective approach to improve the performance of DKSs. However, the pumps of most reported DKSs are frequency sweeping external cavity diode lasers (ECDLs), which suffer from relatively high noise and have a broad linewidth on the order of tens to hundreds of kHz. Compared with tunable lasers, fixed-frequency lasers have less noise, narrower linewidths and smaller volume. For example, Menlo systems can provide ultra-stable laser products with a linewidth of less than 1 Hz. Using such a frequency fixed laser as a pump can significantly reduce the noise of the generated DKSs. Recently, microheater or thermoelectric cooler (TEC)-based thermal tuning methods have been used for DKSs generation12,13,14.
Repetition rate stability is another important parameter of DKSs. Generally, frequency counters are used to characterize the frequency stability of DKSs within a gate time, which is generally on the order of a microsecond to a thousand seconds15,16. Limited by the bandwidth of the photodetector and frequency counter, electro-optic modulators or reference lasers are typically used to lower the detected frequency when the free-spectral-range (FSR) of the DKSs is over 100 GHz. This not only increases the complexity of test systems, but also produces additional measurement errors caused by the stability of RF sources or reference lasers.
In this paper, a micro-ring resonator (MRR) is butterfly packaged with a commercial TEC chip that is used to control the operation temperature. Using a frequency fixed laser with a linewidth of 100 Hz as a pump, soliton crystals (SCs) are stably generated by manually decreasing the operating temperature; these are special DKSs that can completely fill a resonator with collectively ordered ensembles of copropagating solitons17. To the best of our knowledge, this is the narrowest linewidth pump in DKSs generation experiments. The power spectral density (PSD) spectrum of every comb line is measured based on a delayed self-heterodyne interferometer (DSHI) method. Benefitting from the ultra-narrow linewidth of the comb lines, the repetition rate instability of soliton crystals (SCs) is derived from the central frequency drift of the PSD curves. For the SC with a single vacancy, we obtained a repetition rate instability of ~53.24 Hz within 10 µs and ~509.32 Hz within 125 µs.
The protocol consists of several main stages: First, the MRR is coupled with a fiber array (FA) using a six-axis coupling stage. The MRR is fabricated by a high-index doped silica glass platform18,19. Then, the MRR is packaged into a 14-pin butterfly package, which increases the stability for the experiments. SCs are generated using a thermal-controlled method. Finally, the repetition rate fluctuations of SCs are measured by a DSHI method.
1. Optical coupling
2. Device packaging
3. SCs generation
4. Repetition rate fluctuation measurement
Figure 3 shows the transmission power trace while a resonance thermal was tuned across the pump. There was an obvious power step that indicated the generation of SCs. The step had similar power compared with its precursor, the modulational instability comb. Therefore, the generation of SCs was not tuning speed dependent. The SCs exhibited a great variety of states, including vacancies (Schottky defects), Frenkel defects, and superstructure12,
On-chip DKSs provide novel compact coherent optical sources and exhibit excellent application prospects in optical metrology, molecular spectroscopy, and other functions. For commercial applications, compact packaged micro-comb sources are essential. This protocol provides a practical approach to make a packaged micro-comb that benefits from the reliable, low coupling loss connection between the MRR and FA, as well as a robust thermal-controlled DKS generation method. Therefore, our experiments are no longer coupling sta...
The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant 62075238, 61675231) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB24030600).
Name | Company | Catalog Number | Comments |
6-axis coupling stage | Suruga Seiki | KXC620G KGW060 | Contains 3 linear motorized translation states and 3 angular motorized rotational stages. Linear state: Minimum stepping: 0.05 μm; Travel: 20mm; Max.speed: 25mm/s; Repeatability: +/-0.3 μm; Rotational stage:Travel: ±8°; Resolution/pulse: 0.003 degree; Repeatability:±0.005° |
Abrasive powder | Shenyang Kejing Auto-Instrument Co., LTD | 2980002 | Silicon carbide, granularity: 1.5 μm |
Glue 3410 | Electronic Materials Incorporated | Optocast 3410 | Optocast 3410 is an ultra violet light and heat curable epoxy suitable for opto-electronic assembly. It cures rapidly when exposed to U.V. light in the 320-380 nm. |
High-index doped silica glass | Home-made | - | The MRR is fabricated by a high index doped silica glass platform. The waveguide section is 2×3 μm and radius is 592.1 μm, corresponding to FSR of 49 GHz. |
Pump laser | NKT Photonics | E15 | It is a continuous wave fiber laser with linewidth of 100 Hz. |
Ultrastable Laser | Menlosystems | ORS | State-of-the-art linewidth (<1Hz) and stability (<2 x 10-15 Hz) |
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