Physics and applications of counter propagating solitons in microcavities (Conference Presentation)

Microresonator solitons orbit around a closed waveguide path and produce a repetitive output pulse stream at a rate set by the roundtrip time. Here, counter-propagating solitons that simultaneously orbit in an opposing sense (clockwise/counter-clockwise) are studied. Despite sharing the same spatial mode family, their roundtrip times can be precisely and independently controlled. Furthermore, a state is possible in which their relative optical phase and repetition rates are locked. This state allows a single resonator to produce dual-soliton frequency-comb streams with different repetition rates, but with a high relative coherence that is useful in spectroscopy and ranging.