Towards high-power, high-coherence, integrated photonic mmWave platform with microcavity solitons

Abstract

Millimetre waves: soliton solutions in optical microcavity Powerful high-frequency radio waves can be generated by shining laser-driven resonating microcavity solitons onto tiny photodiodes, researchers in the USA have shown. Millimetre-waves (mmWaves), at the top end of the radio spectrum, will improve bandwidth and resolution for future telecommunication technologies, and recent breakthroughs promise ways to generate mmWaves through photonic, rather than electronic, methods. Now, Beichen Wang at the University of Virginia and co-workers have directed laser light into a microscopic ring-shaped silicon nitride resonator, generating solitary wave packets (solitons) that illuminate a tiny photodiode to produce 100 Gigahertz mmWaves at one of the highest powers ever reported. The researchers believe their system could be modified to generate higher-frequency mmWaves of several hundred Gigahertz. Moreover, the microresonator absorbs only a small portion of the laser power, which could be recycled to drive other microresonators.