Intraresonance frequency combs in Kerr microresonators

Abstract

For more than 20 years, optical microresonators have served as the backbone of integrated nonlinear photonics, exploiting Kerr nonlinearity to generate octave-spanning frequency combs, enable quantum effects, and drive optical parametric oscillators. Since the inception of microresonator-based nonlinear optics, related studies have focused primarily on regimes in which photons with distinct resonant modes can interact. Although multiple comb lines can occupy a single resonance during the Kerr comb formation process, their mutual interactions have remained largely unexplored. Here we demonstrate a Kerr comb formation that is confined to a single resonance of a microresonator via dual-pumping. MHz-scale comb-line spacing reveals previously unobserved Kerr-comb dynamics, featuring parametrically driven phase multistability that can be observed directly in the temporal domain. Two laser pumps serve as phase-coupled references for heterodyne read-out, simplifying the measurements.