All-optical azimuthal trapping of dissipative Kerr multi-solitons for relative noise suppression

Abstract

Temporal cavity solitons, or dissipative Kerr solitons (DKSs) in integrated microresonators, are essential for deployable metrology technologies. Such applications favor the lowest noise state, typically the single-DKS state where one soliton is in the resonator. Other multi-DKS states can also be reached, offering better conversion efficiency and thermal stability, potentially simplifying DKS-based technologies. Yet they exhibit more noise due to relative soliton jitter and are usually not compatible with targeted applications. We demonstrate that Kerr-induced synchronization, an all-optical trapping technique, can azimuthally pin the multi-DKS state to a common reference field. This method ensures repetition rate noise is independent of the number of solitons, making a multi-DKS state indistinguishable from a single-DKS state in that regard, akin to trapped-soliton molecule behavior. Supported by theoretical analysis and experimental demonstration in an integrated microresonator, this approach provides metrological capacity regardless of the number of cavity solitons, benefiting numerous DKS-based metrology applications.