Integrated Optical Vortex Microcomb

The explorations of physical degrees of freedom with infinite dimensionalities, such as orbital angular momentum and frequency of light, have profoundly reshaped the landscape of modern optics with representative photonic functional devices including optical vortex emitters and frequency combs. In nanophotonics, whispering gallery mode microresonators naturally support orbital angular momentum of light and have been demonstrated as on-chip emitters of monochromatic optical vortices. On the other hand, whispering gallery mode microresonators serve as a highly efficient nonlinear optical platform for producing light at different frequencies - i.e., microcombs. Here, we interlace the optical vortices and microcombs by demonstrating an optical vortex comb on an III-V integrated nonlinear microresonator. The angular-grating-dressed nonlinear microring simultaneously emits spatiotemporal light springs consisting of 50 orbital angular momentum modes that are each spectrally addressed to the frequency components (longitudinal whispering gallery modes) of the generated microcomb. We further experimentally generate optical pulses with time-varying orbital angular momenta by carefully introducing a specific intermodal phase relation to spatiotemporal light springs. This work may immediately boost the development of integrated nonlinear/quantum photonics for exploring fundamental optical physics and advancing photonic quantum technology.
Comment: To appear in Nature Photonics