Abstract

Temporal cavity solitons (CSs) are pulses of light that persist in coherently driven passive resonators [1], and they play a key role in fibre-based all-optical buffers [2] and coherent micro-resonator frequency combs [3]. They are typically explained as steady-state solutions of the mean-field Lugiato-Lefever equation (LLE), and predicted to correspond to unique attracting states. However, the LLE is only valid for sufficiently low intracavity power levels. Using a more general Ikeda map model of the cavity, Hansson and Wabnitz have recently predicted the co-existence of two distinct stable CS states in the strong-driving regime, where large nonlinear phase shifts (𝜙_NL > 2𝜋) cause adjacent cavity resonances to overlap [Fig. 1(a)] [4]. Because one of the CS states was predicted to possess a significantly shorter duration than the other [Fig. 1(b)], the authors coined the term “super CS” (SCS) for its description [4]. Here, we report on the first experimental observation of SCSs.

© 2017 IEEE