Microresonator Kerr frequency combs with high conversion efficiency

作者:Xue, Xiaoxiao*; Wang, Pei-Hsun; Xuan, Yi; Qi, Minghao; Weiner, Andrew M.
来源:Laser & Photonics Reviews, 2017, 11(1): 1600276.
DOI:10.1002/lpor.201600276

摘要

Microresonator-based Kerr frequency comb (microcomb) generation can potentially revolutionize a variety of applications ranging from telecommunications to optical frequency synthesis. However, phase-locked microcombs have generally had low conversion efficiency limited to a few percent. Here we report experimental results that achieve approximate to 30% conversion efficiency (approximate to 200mml:mspace width="0.33em"mml:mspace> mW on-chip comb power excluding the pump) in the fiber telecommunication band with broadband mode-locked dark-pulse combs. We present a general analysis on the efficiency which is applicable to any phase-locked microcomb state. The effective coupling condition for the pump as well as the duty cycle of localized time-domain structures play a key role in determining the conversion efficiency. Our observation of high efficiency comb states is relevant for applications such as optical communications which require high power per comb line.