Deterministic generation and switching of dissipative Kerr soliton in a thermally controlled micro-resonator

Abstract: Dissipative Kerr solitons (DKSs) in the high-Q micro-resonator corresponds to self-organized short pulse in time domain via double balance between dispersion and Kerr nonlinearity, as well as cavity loss and parametric gain. In this paper, we first experimentally demonstrate deterministic generation and switching of DKSs in a thermally controlled micro-ring resonator based on high-index doped silica glass platform. In our scheme, an auxiliary laser is introduced to timely balance the intra-cavity heat fluctuation. By decreasing the operating temperature through a thermo-electric cooler, soliton crystal is firstly generated, then increasing the temperature, DKSs switching and single soliton are robustly accessed, which is independent of the tuning speed. During the switching process, varieties of DKSs are identified by tens of featured discrete soliton-steps, which is favorable for study of on-chip soliton interactions and nonlinear applications.