Polarization-diverse soliton transitions and deterministic switching dynamics in strongly-coupled and self-stabilized microresonator frequency combs

Abstract Dissipative Kerr soliton microcombs in microresonators have enabled fundamental advances in chip-scale precision metrology, communication, spectroscopy, and parallel signal processing. Here we demonstrate polarization-diverse soliton transitions and deterministic switching dynamics of a self-stabilized microcomb in a strongly-coupled dispersion-managed microresonator driven with a single pump laser. The switching dynamics are induced by the differential thermorefractivity between coupled transverse-magnetic and transverse-electric supermodes during the forward-backward pump detunings. The achieved large soliton existence range and deterministic transitions benefit from the switching dynamics, leading to the cross-polarized soliton microcomb formation when driven in the transverse-magnetic supermode of the single resonator. Secondly, we demonstrate two distinct polarization-diverse soliton formation routes – arising from chaotic or periodically-modulated waveforms via pump power selection. Thirdly, to observe the cross-polarized supermode transition dynamics, we develop a parametric temporal magnifier with picosecond resolution, MHz frame rate and sub-ns temporal windows. We construct picosecond temporal transition portraits in 100-ns recording length of the strongly-coupled solitons, mapping the transitions from multiple soliton molecular states to singlet solitons. This study underpins polarization-diverse soliton microcombs for chip-scale ultrashort pulse generation, supporting applications in frequency and precision metrology, communications, spectroscopy and information processing.