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Breaking the efficiency limitations of dissipative Kerr solitons using nonlinear couplers

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Abstract

Dissipative Kerr solitons (DKS) have long been suffering from poor power conversion efficiency when driven by continuous-wave lasers. By deriving the critical coupling condition of a multimode nonlinear optics system in a generalized theoretical framework, two efficiency limitations of the conventional pump method of DKS are revealed: the effective coupling rate is too small and is also power-dependent. A general approach is provided to resolve this challenge by introducing two types of nonlinear couplers to couple the soliton cavity and CW input through nonlinear processes. The collective coupler opens multiple coupling channels and the self-adaptive coupler builds a power-independent effective external coupling rate to the DKS for approaching the generalized critical coupling condition, which promises near-unity power conversion efficiencies. For instance, a conversion efficiency exceeding 90% is predicted for aluminum nitride microrings with a nonlinear coupler utilizing second-harmonic generation. The mechanism applies to various nonlinear processes, including Raman and Brillouin scattering, and thus paves the way for micro-solitons toward practical applications.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Ming Li, Yan-Lei Zhang, Xin-Biao Xu, Chun-Hua Dong, Guang-Can Guo & Chang-Ling Zou

  2. CAS Center for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Ming Li, Yan-Lei Zhang, Xin-Biao Xu, Chun-Hua Dong, Guang-Can Guo & Chang-Ling Zou

  3. Department of Electronic Engineering, Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Xiao-Xiao Xue

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  1. Ming Li
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  3. Yan-Lei Zhang
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Correspondence to Chun-Hua Dong or Chang-Ling Zou.

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Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11934012, 12293053, 12374361, 11904316, 61690192, U21A20433, 12104441, 12293052, and U21A6006), the Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation (Grant Nos. 2008085QA34, and 2108085MA22), and the Major Scientific Project of Zhejiang Laboratory (Grant No. 2020LC0AD01). Ming Li and Chang-Ling Zou were also supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) Research Funds of the Double First-Class Initiative. This work was also supported by the Supercomputing System in the Supercomputing Center of USTC and the USTC Center for Micro and Nanoscale Research and Fabrication. We thank Dr. Alexander Bruch for discussions.

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Li, M., Xue, XX., Zhang, YL. et al. Breaking the efficiency limitations of dissipative Kerr solitons using nonlinear couplers. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 67, 234211 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-023-2288-y

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