Soliton-effect compression of picosecond pulses on a photonic chip

We report soliton-effect pulse compression of low energy ( ∼ 25 p J ), picosecond pulses on a photonic chip. An ultra-low-loss, dispersion-engineered 40-cm-long waveguide is used to compress 1.2-ps pulses by a factor of 18, which represents, to our knowledge, the largest compression factor yet experimentally demonstrated on-chip. Our scheme allows for interfacing with an on-chip picosecond source and offers a path towards a fully integrated stabilized frequency comb source.