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Timestamp: 2019-04-24 02:57:05+00:00

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We report, to the best of our knowledge, the first demonstration of thermally controlled soliton mode-locked frequency comb generation in microresonators. By controlling the electric current through heaters integrated with silicon nitride microresonators, we demonstrate a systematic and repeatable pathway to single- and multi-soliton mode-locked states without adjusting the pump laser wavelength. Such an approach could greatly simplify the generation of mode-locked frequency combs and facilitate applications such as chip-based dual-comb spectroscopy.
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Fig. 1. (a) Pump power transmission as the tunable laser frequency is scanned across the resonance. The step-like structure characteristic of soliton formation is indicated by the arrow. (b) Measured optical spectrum for a single-soliton mode-locked state with the fitted sech 2 -pulse spectrum (blue dashed line). The 3 dB bandwidth of the soliton is 24 nm.
Fig. 2. Experimental setup for generation and characterization of soliton mode-locked states in Si 3 N 4 microresonators. We characterize the optical spectrum, RF amplitude noise spectrum, and transmitted pump power simultaneously. Integrated resistive heaters are used to tune the resonance frequency to generate frequency combs.
Fig. 3. Oscilloscope trace of the pump transmission as the current on the integrated heater is modulated with a triangular waveform. The steps indicated by the arrows are characteristic of transitions between different multi-soliton states.
Fig. 4. Generated frequency comb spectra for different cavity resonance detunings produced by terminating the heater current scan at different values. The optical and RF spectra as the comb evolves correspond to (a) the initial cascaded FWM; (b) the mini-comb formation; (c) the broadband high-noise regime, with the plateau-like optical spectrum and broad noise peak; and (d) the low-noise single-soliton state with a fitted sech 2 -spectral profile (blue dashed curve). The 3 dB bandwidth of the soliton is 20 nm.
Fig. 5. (a) Persistence trace of the pump transmission recorded over 3 s. We see that the comb returns to the same soliton state over 15 consecutive traces. The modulation signal sent to the current source is shown in (b). The downward slope corresponds to a blueshift of the resonance. The abrupt increase in current redshifts the resonance and leads to the repeatable generation of the soliton state.
Fig. 6. Measured spectra for three different multi-soliton states: (a), (b), and (c). The modulations on the spectra are due to the spectral interference among multiple mode-locked solitons within one round-trip of the cavity. (The blue dashed line indicates a fitted sech 2 envelope for a single-soliton.) The spectrum in (a) is indicative of a two soliton state with the pulses half a round-trip apart.

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