Pulley coupler engineering for frequency comb generation based on the supermodal approach

Abstract

Light coupling into integrated microresonators is typically achieved using straight bus couplers that are optimized to achieve critical coupling at the pump wavelength but lack spectral engineering capabilities. Pulley couplers offer additional degrees of freedom and opportunities, but optimizing their spectral response requires intensive and time-consuming numerical simulations. To address this challenge, we developed a semi-analytical approach to quickly and efficiently calculate the coupling quality factor of pulley couplers. This enables the design of either broadband or wavelength-selective pulley couplers, depending on the target application. We illustrate the dispersion engineering capabilities offered by this new approach in the context of Kerr microcombs and experimentally validate it on the SiN photonic platform. We show that it is possible to achieve a non-dispersive broadband coupler, enabling the generation of frequency combs with similar spectral characteristics (span and intensity) irrespectively of the chosen pump wavelength.