Synthesized spatiotemporal mode-locking and photonic flywheel in multimode mesoresonators

Mingming Nie; Kunpeng Jia; Yijun Xie; Shining Zhu; Zhenda Xie; Shu-Wei Huang

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-34103-0

Synthesized spatiotemporal mode-locking and photonic flywheel in multimode mesoresonators

Nat Commun. 2022 Oct 27;13(1):6395. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-34103-0.

Authors

Mingming Nie¹, Kunpeng Jia², Yijun Xie³, Shining Zhu⁴, Zhenda Xie⁵, Shu-Wei Huang⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, 80309, USA. mingming.nie@colorado.edu.
² National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, School of Physics, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China. jiakunpeng@nju.edu.cn.
³ Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, 80309, USA.
⁴ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, School of Physics, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China.
⁵ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, School of Physics, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China. xiezhenda@nju.edu.cn.
⁶ Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, 80309, USA. shuwei.huang@colorado.edu.

Abstract

Dissipative Kerr soliton (DKS) frequency combs-also known as microcombs-have arguably created a new field in cavity nonlinear photonics, with a strong cross-fertilization between theoretical, experimental, and technological research. Spatiotemporal mode-locking (STML) not only adds new degrees of freedom to ultrafast laser technology, but also provides new insights for implementing analogue computers and heuristic optimizers with photonics. Here, we combine the principles of DKS and STML to demonstrate the STML DKS by developing an unexplored ultrahigh-quality-factor Fabry-Pérot (FP) mesoresonator based on graded index multimode fiber (GRIN-MMF). Complementing the two-step pumping scheme with a cavity stress tuning method, we can selectively excite either the eigenmode DKS or the STML DKS. Furthermore, we demonstrate an ultralow noise microcomb that enhances the photonic flywheel performance in both the fundamental comb linewidth and DKS timing jitter. The demonstrated fundamental comb linewidth of 400 mHz and DKS timing jitter of 500 attosecond (averaging times up to 25 μs) represent improvements of 25× and 2.5×, respectively, from the state-of-the-art. Our results show the potential of GRIN-MMF FP mesoresonators as an ideal testbed for high-dimensional nonlinear cavity dynamics and photonic flywheel with ultrahigh coherence and ultralow timing jitter.

Abstract

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