Dissipative soliton generation and real-time dynamics in microresonator-filtered fiber lasers

摘要

Optical frequency combs in microresonators(microcombs)have a wide range of applications in science and technology,due to its compact size and access to considerably larger comb spacing.Despite recent successes,the problems of self-starting,high mode efficiency as well as high output power have not been fully addressed for conventional soliton microcombs.Recent demonstration of laser cavity soliton microcombs by nesting a microresonator into a fiber cavity,shows great potential to solve the problems.Here we study the dissipative soliton generation and interaction dynamics in a microresonator-fltered fiber laser in both theory and experiment.We bring theoretical insight into the mode-locking principle,discuss the parameters effect on soliton properties,and provide experimental guidelines for broadband soliton generation.We predict chirped bright dissipative soliton with flat-top spectral envelope in microresonators with normal dispersion,which is fundamentally forbidden for the externally driven case.Furthermore,we experimentally achieve soliton microcombs with large bandwidth of~10 nm and high mode efficiency of 90.7%.Finally,by taking advantage of an ultrahigh-speed time magnifier,we study the real-time soliton formation and interaction dynamics and experimentally observe soliton Newton's cradle.Our study will benefit the design of the novel,high-efficiency and self-starting microcombs for real-world applications.