Infrared and Laser Engineering, Volume. 51, Issue 5, 20220294(2022)

Fabrication and optical frequency comb generation in high-quality factor silicon oxide microcavity (Invited)

You Gao... Tuo Liu, Siyu Wang and Hairun Guo |Show fewer author(s)
Author Affiliations
  • Joint International Research Laboratory of Specialty Fiber Optics and Advanced Communication, Key Laboratory of Specialty Fiber Optics and Optical Access Networks, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China
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    Based on ultra-high quality factor(Q) and nonlinear optical microcavities, optical microcombs(microcavity optical frequency comb) have enabled a variety of important applications including high volume optical communications, optical data center, photonic neuromorphic computation and massive parallel LIDAR. Whispering gallery mode (WGM) microcavities stand for an important platform for studying the microcavity optical frequency comb technology, particularly having record ultra-high Q factors as well as the ultra-high finesse. It can realize ultra-narrow linewidth lasers and optical frequency combs, and photonic microwaves for synthesizing ultra-low noise. Here we developed highQ WGM microcavities from a silica (SiO2) rod fused and shaped with the CO2 laser. The quality factor is above 108 with a free spectrum range at the level of 10 GHz. The cavity resonances as well as the coupling ideality have been characterized, where a degradation of Q factors in a humid environment was observed and recovered with a second annealing process. Moreover, Kerr comb generation was demonstrated in such SiO2 microcavities, which at the moment is mostly in a noisy state governed by the modulation instability regime. Yet the footprint of the cavity soliton state was experimentally observed as a “soliton step” signal. The results indicate that a low-noise and fully coherent soliton microcomb is potentially accessible in home developed SiO2 microcavities, and is readily for comb-related applications.

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    You Gao, Tuo Liu, Siyu Wang, Hairun Guo. Fabrication and optical frequency comb generation in high-quality factor silicon oxide microcavity (Invited)[J]. Infrared and Laser Engineering, 2022, 51(5): 20220294

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    Paper Information

    Category: Special issue—Microcavity optical frequency comb technology

    Received: Apr. 26, 2022

    Accepted: --

    Published Online: Jun. 14, 2022

    The Author Email:

    DOI:10.3788/IRLA20220294

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