Soliton Microcombs Multiplexing Using Intracavity-Stimulated Brillouin Lasers
Hao Zhang, Teng Tan, Hao-Jing Chen, Yan Yu, Wenting Wang, Bing Chang, Yupei Liang, Yanhong Guo, Heng Zhou, Handing Xia, Qihuang Gong, Chee Wei Wong, Yunjiang Rao, Yun‐Feng Xiao, Baicheng Yao
Abstract
Solitons in microresonators have spurred intriguing nonlinear optical physics and photonic applications. Here, by combining Kerr and Brillouin nonlinearities in an over-modal microcavity, we demonstrate spatial multiplexing of soliton microcombs under a single external laser pumping operation. This demonstration offers an ideal scheme to realize highly coherent dual-comb sources in a compact, low-cost and energy-efficient manner, with uniquely low beating noise. Moreover, by selecting the dual-comb modes, the repetition rate difference of a dual-comb pair could be flexibly switched, ranging from 8.5 to 212 MHz. Beyond dual-comb, the high-density mode geometry allows the cascaded Brillouin lasers, driving the co-generation of up to 5 space-multiplexing frequency combs in distinct mode families. This Letter offers a novel physics paradigm for comb interferometry and provides a widely appropriate tool for versatile applications such as comb metrology, spectroscopy, and ranging.