Thermally Induced Generation of Platicons in Optical Microresonators

Abstract: We demonstrate numerically novel mechanism providing generation of the flat-top solitonic pulses, platicons, in optical microresonators at normal GVD via negative thermal effects. We found that platicon excitation is possible if the ratio of the photon lifetime to the thermal relaxation time is large enough. We show that there are two regimes of the platicon generation depending on the pump amplitude: the smooth one and the oscillatory one. Parameter ranges providing platicon excitation are found and analysed for different values of the thermal relaxation time, frequency-scan rate and GVD coefficient. Possibility of the turn-key generation regime is also shown.