Parametric instability in coupled nonlinear microcavities
N. Carlon Zambon, S. R. K. Rodríguez, A. Lemaı̂tre, Abdelmounaïm Harouri, L. Le Gratiet, Isabelle Sagnes, Philippe St-Jean, Sylvain Ravets, A. Amo, J. Bloch
Abstract
We report the observation of a parametric instability in the out-of-equilibrium steady state of two coupled Kerr microresonators coherently driven by a laser. Using a resonant excitation, we drive the system into an unstable regime, where we observe the appearance of intense and well-resolved sideband modes in the emission spectrum. This feature is a characteristic signature of self-sustained oscillations of the intracavity field. We comprehensively model our findings using semiclassical Langevin equations for the cavity field dynamics combined with a linear stability analysis. The inherent scalability of our semiconductor platform, enriched with a strong Kerr nonlinearity, is promising for the realization of integrated optical parametric oscillator networks.