Oppo Gian-Luca, Firth William J
SUPA and Department of Physics, University of Strathclyde, 107 Rottenrow, Glasgow, Scotland G4 0NG, UK.
Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2024 Dec 30;382(2287):20230336. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2023.0336. Epub 2024 Dec 24.
Driven optical cavities containing a nonlinear medium support stable dissipative solitons, cavity solitons, in the form of bright or dark spots of light on a uniformly-lit background. Broadening effects due to diffraction or group velocity dispersion are balanced by the nonlinear interaction with the medium while cavity losses balance the input energy. The history, properties, physical interpretation and wide application of cavity solitons are reviewed. Cavity solitons in the plane perpendicular to light propagation find application in optical information processing, while cavity solitons in the longitudinal direction produce high-quality frequency combs with applications in optical communications, frequency standards, optical clocks, future GPS, astronomy and quantum technologies.This article is part of the theme issue 'The quantum theory of light'.
包含非线性介质的驱动光学腔支持稳定的耗散孤子,即腔孤子,其表现为均匀照明背景上的亮或暗的光斑。衍射或群速度色散引起的展宽效应通过与介质的非线性相互作用得到平衡,而腔损耗则平衡输入能量。本文回顾了腔孤子的历史、特性、物理解释及其广泛应用。垂直于光传播方向的平面内的腔孤子在光信息处理中有应用,而纵向的腔孤子则产生高质量的频率梳,应用于光通信、频率标准、光钟、未来的全球定位系统、天文学和量子技术。本文是主题为“光的量子理论”的一部分。