Experimental observation of coherent cavity soliton frequency combs in silica microspheres

We report on the experimental observation of coherent cavity soliton frequency combs in silica microspheres. Specifically, we demonstrate that careful alignment of the microsphere relative to the coupling fiber taper allows for the suppression of higher-order spatial modes, reducing mode interaction...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inOptics letters Vol. 41; no. 20; p. 4613
Main Authors Webb, Karen E, Erkintalo, Miro, Coen, Stéphane, Murdoch, Stuart G
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 15.10.2016
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Summary:We report on the experimental observation of coherent cavity soliton frequency combs in silica microspheres. Specifically, we demonstrate that careful alignment of the microsphere relative to the coupling fiber taper allows for the suppression of higher-order spatial modes, reducing mode interactions and enabling soliton formation. Our measurements show that the temporal cavity solitons have sub-100-fs durations, exhibit considerable Raman self-frequency shift, and generally come in groups of three or four, occasionally with equidistant spacing in the time domain. RF amplitude noise measurements and spectral interferometry confirm the high coherence of the observed soliton frequency combs, and numerical simulations show good agreement with experiments.
ISSN:1539-4794
DOI:10.1364/ol.41.004613