Silicon carbide soliton microcomb generation for narrow-grid optical communications

Abstract

A soliton microcomb can play a crucial role in narrow-grid optical communications by replacing many independently operated lasers in wavelength-division multiplexing systems. In this work, we designed and demonstrated power-efficient soliton microcombs with 100-GHz free spectral range in an integrated 4H-SiC platform for the first time. The combination of enabling technologies, including efficient fiber coupling (3 dB insertion loss), high-quality-factor microrings (intrinsic quality factors up to 5.7 million), and the employment of the Raman effect for adiabatic accessing of the soliton state, has enabled the demonstration of soliton pump power as low as 6 mW while supporting comb powers above -20 dBm per line near the pump wavelength.