Experimental observations of bright dissipative Kerr cavity solitons and their collapsed snaking in a driven resonator with normal dispersion

Abstract: Driven Kerr nonlinear optical resonators can sustain localized structures known as dissipative Kerr cavity solitons, which have recently attracted significant attention as the temporal counterparts of microresonator optical frequency combs. Whilst conventional wisdom asserts that bright cavity solitons can only exist in the region of anomalous dispersion, recent theoretical studies have predicted that higher-order dispersion can fundamentally alter the situation, enabling bright localized structures even under conditions of normal dispersion driving. Here we demonstrate a flexible optical fibre ring resonator platform that offers unprecedented control over dispersion conditions, and we report on the first experimental observations of bright localized structures that are fundamentally enabled by higher-order dispersion. In broad agreement with past theoretical predictions, we find that several distinct bright structures can co-exist for the same parameters, and we observe experimental evidence of their collapsed snaking bifurcation structure. In addition to enabling direct experimental verifications of a number of theoretical predictions, we show that the ability to judiciously control the dispersion conditions offers a novel route for ultrashort pulse generation: the bright structures observed in our work correspond to pulses of light as short as 220~fs -- the record for a passive all-fibre ring resonator. We envisage that our work will stimulate further fundamental studies on the impact of higher-order dispersion on Kerr cavity dynamics, as well as guide the development of novel ultrashort pulse sources and dispersion-engineered microresonator frequency combs.