The advantages of low cost, compact size, and reduced power consumption makes a photonic chip‐based ultrafast laser source an appealing technology for diverse applications such as all‐optical signal processing, frequency metrology, spectroscopy, and sensing. To date, on‐chip ultrafast sources are typically generated by microresonator‐based Kerr‐comb solitons, which require precise phase tuning and frequency agile lasers to access the soliton state. Here, this work reports the first experimental demonstration of an externally pumped on‐chip ultrafast soliton laser source based on Raman soliton self‐frequency shift. By capitalizing on strong optical nonlinearity and versatile dispersion control in Ge28Sb12Se60chalcogenide glass waveguides, 185 fs duration Raman soliton generation has been demonstrated, possessing continuous wavelength tunability from 1589 to 1807 nm with signal‐to‐noise ratios consistently exceeding 65 dB. The source operates with pump pulse energies as low as 1.08 pJ, representing over three orders of magnitude improvement compared to fiber‐based Raman soliton sources. In addition, the generated solitons exhibit excellent spectral purity and stability free from parasitic sidebands. These experimental results are further validated by theoretical analysis, revealing insights into the soliton dynamics and critical device design guidelines. This work therefore enables a new class of broadly tunable, energy‐efficient, compact, and potentially cost‐effective on‐chip ultrafast laser sources.
High-spectral-purity frequency-agile room-temperature sources in the terahertz spectrum are foundational elements for imaging, sensing, metrology, and communications. Here we present a chip-scale optical parametric oscillator based on an integrated nonlinear microresonator that provides broadly tunable single-frequency and multi-frequency oscillators in the terahertz regime. Through optical-to-terahertz down-conversion using a plasmonic nanoantenna array, coherent terahertz radiation spanning 2.8-octaves is achieved from 330 GHz to 2.3 THz, with ≈20 GHz cavity-mode-limited frequency tuning step and ≈10 MHz intracavity-mode continuous frequency tuning range at each step. By controlling the microresonator intracavity power and pump-resonance detuning, tunable multi-frequency terahertz oscillators are also realized. Furthermore, by stabilizing the microresonator pump power and wavelength, sub-100 Hz linewidth of the terahertz radiation with 10−15residual frequency instability is demonstrated. The room-temperature generation of both single-frequency, frequency-agile terahertz radiation and multi-frequency terahertz oscillators in the chip-scale platform offers unique capabilities in metrology, sensing, imaging and communications.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10370500
- Publisher / Repository:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Nature Communications
- Volume:
- 13
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2041-1723
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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