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arXiv:1905.01119 · Physical Review A

Effects of self- and cross-phase modulation on the spontaneous symmetry breaking of light in ring resonators

Lewis Hill, Gian‐Luca Oppo, Michael T. M. Woodley, Pascal Del’Haye

Published Jan 21, 2020• 76 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Spontaneous symmetry breaking can occur in the powers of two optical modes coupled into a ring resonator, described by a pair of coupled Lorentzian equations, and featuring tunable self- and cross-phase modulation terms. Investigated is a wide variety of nonlinear materials by changing the ratio of the self- and cross-phase interaction coefficients. Static and dynamic effects range from the number and stability of stationary states to the onset and nature of oscillations. Minimal conditions to observe symmetry breaking are provided in terms of the ratio of the self- and cross-phase coefficients, detuning, and input power. Different ratios of the nonlinear coefficients also influence the dynamical regime, where they can induce or suppress bifurcations and oscillations. A generalized description on this kind is useful for the development of all-optical components, such as isolators and oscillators, constructed from a wide variety of optical media in ring resonators.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.101.013823

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Spontaneous symmetry breaking can occur in the powers of two optical modes coupled into a ring resonator, described by a pair of coupled Lorentzian equations, and featuring tunable self- and cross-phase modulation terms. Investigated is a wide variety of nonlinear materials by changing the ratio of the self- and cross-phase interaction coefficients. Static and dynamic effects range from the number and stability of stationary states to the onset and nature of oscillations. Minimal conditions to observe symmetry breaking are provided in terms of the ratio of the self- and cross-phase coefficients, detuning, and input power. Different ratios of the nonlinear coefficients also influence the dynamical regime, where they can induce or suppress bifurcations and oscillations. A generalized description on this kind is useful for the development of all-optical components, such as isolators and oscillators, constructed from a wide variety of optical media in ring resonators.
Self-phase modulation is ubiquitous in optical systems: It provides foundational functionality to numerous photonic technologies, such as soliton generation and ultrafast pulse compression. However, it remains challenging to directly modify the coefficient of self-phase modulation, which is typically regarded as a fixed property of optical materials and structures. In this work, we overcome this limitation and demonstrate reconfigurable self-phase modulation with an integrated photonic cavity. This is achieved by introducing the engineered backaction from the reservoir photonic resonance through the cascaded second-order nonlinear coupling. The coefficient of self-phase modulation is tuned from -2.7 to +4.7 of its intrinsic value. With negative coefficients, we observe the anomalous self-phase modulation, where photonic resonances are shifted towards higher frequencies. With the reconfigurable self-phase modulation, we further demonstrate the control of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in the integrated photonic ring cavity.
Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a concept of fundamental importance in many areas of physics, underpinning such diverse phenomena as ferromagnetism, superconductivity, superfluidity and the Higgs mechanism. Here we demonstrate nonreciprocity and spontaneous symmetry breaking between counter-propagating light in dielectric microresonators. The symmetry breaking corresponds to a resonance frequency splitting that allows only one of two counter-propagating (but otherwise identical) states of light to circulate in the resonator. Equivalently, this effect can be seen as the collapse of standing waves and transition to travelling waves within the resonator. We present theoretical calculations to show that the symmetry breaking is induced by Kerr-nonlinearity-mediated interaction between the counter-propagating light. Our findings pave the way for a variety of applications including optically controllable circulators and isolators, all-optical switching, nonlinear-enhanced rotation sensing, optical flip-flops for photonic memories as well as exceptionally sensitive power and refractive index sensors.
Nonlinear phenomena such as optical bistability and spontaneous symmetry breaking play a central role in Kerr resonators, and are increasingly exploited in photonic integrated circuits for all-optical information processing. In this work, we present an analytical framework allowing to find the stationary states and their bifurcations for the propagating fields in Kerr ring and Fabry-Perot resonators, which can be generalized to other nonlinear systems. Using tools from nonlinear algebra, namely, polynomial resultants and Groebner bases, we derive compact polynomial expressions describing the system's full solution in both intensity and amplitude representations. The bifurcations follow directly from these expressions, and are additionally characterized as exceptional points of an auxiliary linear non-Hermitian system. Together, these results unify optical bistability and spontaneous symmetry breaking within a single analytical framework, and offer a route toward improved control of nonlinear optical systems, and the design of photonic devices.
We develop a general Hamiltonian treatment of spontaneous four-wave mixing in a microring resonator side-coupled to a channel waveguide. The effect of scattering losses in the ring is included, as well as parasitic nonlinear effects including self- and cross-phase modulation. A procedure for computing the output of such a system for arbitrary parameters and pump states is presented. For the limit of weak pumping an expression for the joint spectral intensity of generated photon pairs, as well as the singles-to-coincidences ratio, is derived.
Abstract Spontaneous symmetry breaking in glass dielectric microspheres with Kerr nonlinearity was studied experimentally and theoretically, taking into account the linear Rayleigh scattering between counterpropagating waves under bidirectional symmetric optical pumping. It was shown that the higher the Rayleigh scattering coefficient, the higher the threshold power required to observe the effect. An increase in the Rayleigh coupling coefficient between counterpropagating waves leads to a narrowing of the pump frequency detuning region from the exact resonance frequency required for spontaneous symmetry breaking, and a decrease in the asymmetry of the light states
We exploit polarization self-rotation in atomic rubidium vapor to observe spontaneous symmetry breaking and bistability of polarization patterns. We pump the vapor cell with horizontally polarized light while the vertical polarization, which is initially in the vacuum state, is resonated in a ring cavity. Vacuum fluctuations in this mode experience cumulative gain due to the compound action of amplification due to the self-rotation and feedback through the resonator, eventually acquiring a macroscopic magnitude akin to an optical parametric oscillator. The randomness of these fluctuations results in a bistable, random macroscopic polarization pattern at the output. We propose utilizing this mechanism to simulate Ising-like interaction between multiple spatial modes and as a basis for a fully optical coherent Ising machine.