Super-efficient temporal solitons in mutually coupled optical cavities

Abstract: A coherently driven Kerr optical cavity is able to convert a continuous-wave laser to a sequence of ultrashort soliton pulses, enabling the generation of broadband and mode-locked frequency combs. Kerr cavity solitons are balanced through an energy exchange with the driving pump field. Improving the energy conversion efficiency from the pump to the soliton is of great significance for practical applications, but remains an outstanding challenge due to a limited temporal overlap between the soliton and the pump. Here, we report the discovery of temporal Kerr solitons in mutually coupled cavities instead of a traditional single cavity. We propose a strategy for breaking the limitation of pump-to-soliton energy conversion, and connect the underlying mechanism to impedance matching in radiofrequency electronic circuits. With macro optical fiber ring cavities which share the same physical model as miniature optical microresonators, we demonstrate nearly one-order improvement of the efficiency. The results pave the way towards super-efficient soliton microcombs based on optical microresonators with ultra-high quality factors.