Temporal solitons in microresonators driven by optical pulses
Continuous wave laser driven, high Q Kerr nonlinear optical microresonators have enabled the generation of optical frequency combs, ultralow noise microwaves and ultrashort optical pulses at tens of gigahertz repetition rate. Here, we break with the paradigm of the continuous wave driving and instead use periodic, picosecond optical pulses. In a fibre based Fabry Perot microresonator we observe the deterministic generation of stable femtosecond dissipative cavity solitons 'on top' of the resonantly enhanced driving pulses. The solitons lock to the driving pulse, which enables direct all optical control of the soliton's repetition rate and tuning of its carrier envelope offset frequency. When compared with continuous wave driven microresonators or non resonant pulsed supercontinuum generation, this new approach is more efficient and can yield broadband frequency combs at an average driving power significantly below the continuous wave parametric threshold. Bridging the fields of continuous wave driven resonant and pulse driven non resonant nonlinear optics, these results enable efficient microresonator frequency combs, resonant supercontinuum generation and microphotonic pulse compression. By driving a high Q fibre based Fabry Perot microresonator with periodic, picosecond optical pulses, deterministic generation of stable femtosecond dissipative cavity solitons has been experimentally realized.