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Physical Review A

Control of quantum interference frequency combs: Multistable temporal cavity solitons

Mansour Eslami, Maedeh Sadat Hashemi, David Grant, Gian‐Luca Oppo

Published Nov 20, 2023• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Two branches of bistable temporal cavity solitons are found in models of quantum interference in microresonators with a $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$ three-level medium in the anomalous dispersion regime. The cavity solitons are due to the locking of moving domain walls. We identify two distinct Maxwell points on opposite sides of the cavity resonance where domain walls are stationary and two distinct temporal cavity solitons, one narrow and with a high peak intensity, the other broader and with a lower peak intensity, coexist over wide parameter ranges and without the need of secondary cavity resonances. Localized structures combining the two soliton branches oscillate on timescales of tens of cavity round trips. Frequency combs generated by combinations of different types of multistable temporal cavity solitons lead to enhanced bandwidths and their control.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.108.053511

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Two branches of bistable temporal cavity solitons are found in models of quantum interference in microresonators with a \ensuremathΛ\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}\ensuremathΛ three-level medium in the anomalous dispersion regime. The cavity solitons are due to the locking of moving domain walls. We identify two distinct Maxwell points on opposite sides of the cavity resonance where domain walls are stationary and two distinct temporal cavity solitons, one narrow and with a high peak intensity, the other broader and with a lower peak intensity, coexist over wide parameter ranges and without the need of secondary cavity resonances. Localized structures combining the two soliton branches oscillate on timescales of tens of cavity round trips. Frequency combs generated by combinations of different types of multistable temporal cavity solitons lead to enhanced bandwidths and their control.
Temporal cavity solitons in ring microresonators provide broad and controllable generation of frequency combs with applications in frequency standards and precise atomic clocks. Three-level media in the $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$ configuration inside microresonators displaying electromagnetically induced transparency can be used for the generation of temporal cavity solitons and frequency combs in the presence of anomalous dispersion and two external driving fields close to resonance. Here domain walls separating regions of two dark states due to quantum interference correspond to realizations of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage without input pulses. With no need of modulational instabilities, bright temporal cavity solitons and frequency combs are formed when these domain walls lock with each other. Wide stability ranges, close to resonance operation, and the optimal shape of the cavity solitons due to three-level quantum interference can make them preferable to those in two-level media.
Cavity solitons in ring resonators have revolutionized frequency comb generation and its applications. Coexistence of bright and dark cavity solitons in these devices is, in general, associated with vectorial configurations with more than one optical field resonated in the cavity. We demonstrate the coexistence of stable bright, stable dark, and stable hybrid bright-dark cavity solitons in a single resonated field device formed by a three-level medium in a micro-resonator with normal dispersion. Each of these solitons displays unusually wide regions of stability and a multitude of secondary localized structures, including families of soliton crystals leading to an unprecedented variety of possible frequency combs in a single photonic device. Of the many possible soliton crystals, the most striking is a periodic sequence of dark cavity solitons found at huge distances from the stability region of the single dark soliton.
Temporal cavity solitons generated in monochromatically driven dispersive Kerr resonators offer an attractive avenue for on-chip optical frequency comb generation. Key to many of their applications is to understand how noise -- both technical and quantum -- affects the soliton states, which has accordingly been extensively investigated. Here, we report on a comprehensive theoretical study that elucidates how technical and quantum fluctuations impact a new type of soliton structure that has very recently been predicted and observed in dispersive Kerr resonators under conditions of bichromatic driving: the pure-Kerr parametrically driven cavity soliton (PDCS). We examine how classical laser phase noise transfers from the two pump fields onto the soliton frequency comb, and we calculate the solitons' fundamental quantum-limited timing jitter and two-mode squeezing spectra. In each case, we find that PDCSs can out-perform conventional cavity solitons with comparable characteristics, even when driven by two uncorrelated lasers. Our results demonstrate that pure-Kerr PDCSs can offer unprecedented performance in noise-sensitive photonic applications and as a quantum resource
Dissipative Kerr solitons in optical microresonators underpin chip-scale frequency combs with applications ranging from coherent telecommunications to precision spectroscopy. Yet the characterization of their intrinsic femtosecond temporal structure remains challenging, as the low pulse energy and broad spectral bandwidth necessitate optical amplification and careful dispersion compensation in conventional ultrafast diagnostics, both of which can significantly distort the waveform. Here we demonstrate a quantum-interference metrology of microcomb solitons based on Hong-Ou-Mandel interference. By attenuating the soliton stream to the single-photon level and measuring fourth-order interference, we directly retrieve near transform-limited pulse durations without amplification or dispersion management, remaining accurate even after propagation through 25 km of standard fiber. The same interferogram also provides direct access to the temporal separations in multi-soliton states by converting inter-soliton separations into additional interference dips at corresponding delays, enabling sub-picosecond characterization of their intracavity temporal structure. This quantum-inspired paradigm introduces a fundamentally new metrological approach that is immune to amplification and dispersion distortions, offering a powerful tool for the characterization of complex soliton physics.
Mode-locked biphoton frequency combs exhibit multiple discrete comblike temporal correlations from the Fourier transform of its phase-coherent frequency spectrum. Both temporal correlation and Franson interferometry are valuable tools for analyzing the joint properties of biphoton frequency combs, and the latter has proven to be essential for testing the fundamental quantum nature, the time-energy entanglement distribution, and the large-alphabet quantum key distributions. However, the Franson recurrence interference visibility in biphoton frequency combs unavoidably experiences a falloff that deteriorates the quality of time-energy entanglement and channel capacity for longer cavity round trips. In this paper, we provide a new method to address this problem towards optimum Franson interference recurrence. We first observe mode-locked temporal oscillations in a 5.03 GHz free-spectral range singly filtered biphoton frequency comb using only commercial detectors. Then, we observe similar falloff trend of time-energy entanglement in 15.15 GHz and 5.03 GHz free-spectral range singly filtered biphoton frequency combs, whereas, the optimum central time-bin accidental-subtracted visibility over 97% for both cavities. Here, we find that by increasing the cavity finesse F , we can enhance the detection probability in temporal correlations and towards optimum Franson interference recurrence in our singly filtered biphoton frequency combs. For the first time, via a higher cavity finesse F of 45.92 with a 15.11 GHz free-spectral range singly filtered biphoton frequency comb, we present an experimental ≈3.13-fold improvement of the Franson visibility compared to the Franson visibility with a cavity finesse F of 11.14 at the sixth time bin. Near optimum Franson interference recurrence and a time-bin Schmidt number near 16 effective modes in similar free-spectral range cavity are predicted with a finesse F of 200. Our configuration is versatile and robust against changes in cavity parameters that can be designed for various quantum applications, such as high-dimensional time-energy entanglement distributions, high-dimensional quantum key distributions, and wavelength-multiplexed quantum networks.