June 2016
Spotlight Summary by Gianluca Galzerano
Thermally controlled comb generation and soliton modelocking in microresonators
The availability of optical frequency comb devices with extreme temporal coherence allowed the development of spectroscopic instruments with unprecedented ultrabroad band and high-speed capabilities. Recently, significant efforts have been devoted to the development of compact frequency combs based on the technology of silicon nitride microresonators, a particularly attractive platform for chip-scale frequency comb devices.
In this Optics Letters article, C. Joshi and coworkers demonstrated a fundamental step forward in the active control of the coherence properties of an optical frequency comb based on a silicon nitride microresonator implementing integrated heaters for the thermal control of the soliton mode-locking regimes. This solution greatly simplifies the control of the microresonator resonance frequencies and will allow the generation of ultra-narrow linewidth chip-based optical frequency combs. Moreover, this technique will enable the generation of simultaneous optical combs that share the same single-frequency pump source.
The combination of the frequency comb and microresonator technologies in a compact, robust, and portable single device will open new perspectives in a wide range of high-performance lab-on-a-chip on-site spectroscopic sensing.
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In this Optics Letters article, C. Joshi and coworkers demonstrated a fundamental step forward in the active control of the coherence properties of an optical frequency comb based on a silicon nitride microresonator implementing integrated heaters for the thermal control of the soliton mode-locking regimes. This solution greatly simplifies the control of the microresonator resonance frequencies and will allow the generation of ultra-narrow linewidth chip-based optical frequency combs. Moreover, this technique will enable the generation of simultaneous optical combs that share the same single-frequency pump source.
The combination of the frequency comb and microresonator technologies in a compact, robust, and portable single device will open new perspectives in a wide range of high-performance lab-on-a-chip on-site spectroscopic sensing.
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Article Information
Thermally controlled comb generation and soliton modelocking in microresonators
Chaitanya Joshi, Jae K. Jang, Kevin Luke, Xingchen Ji, Steven A. Miller, Alexander Klenner, Yoshitomo Okawachi, Michal Lipson, and Alexander L. Gaeta
Opt. Lett. 41(11) 2565-2568 (2016) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF