Nonlocal bonding of a soliton and a blue-detuned state in a microcomb laser
Antonio Cutrona, Vittorio Cecconi, Pierre Henry Hanzard, Maxwell Rowley, Debayan Das, Andrew Cooper, Luke Peters, Luana Olivieri, Benjamin Wetzel, Roberto Morandotti, Sai T. Chu, Brent E. Little, David Moss, Juan Sebastian Totero Gongora, Marco Peccianti, Alessia Pasquazi
Abstract
Abstract Laser cavity-solitons can appear in a microresonator-filtered laser when judiciously balancing the slow nonlinearities of the system. Under certain conditions, such optical states can be made to self-emerge and recover spontaneously, and the understanding of their robustness is critical for practical applications. Here, we study the formation of a bonded state comprising a soliton and a blue-detuned continuous wave, whose coexistence is mediated by dispersion in the nonlinear refractive index. Our real-time dispersive Fourier transform measurements, supported by comprehensive theoretical analysis, reveal the presence of an elastic bonding between the two states, resulting in an enhancement of the soliton’s robustness.