The invention is related to the field of doubly-resonant Kerr cavities, and in particular to nonlinear harmonic generation and devices in doubly-resonant Kerr cavities.
Nonlinear frequency conversion has been commonly realized in the context of waveguides, or even for free propagation in the nonlinear materials, in which light at one frequency co-propagates with the generated light at the harmonic frequency. A phase-matching condition between the two frequencies must be satisfied in this case in order to obtain efficient conversion. Moreover, as the input power is increased, the frequency conversion eventually saturates due to competition between up and down conversion. Frequency conversion in a doubly resonant cavity has three fundamental differences from this familiar case of propagating modes.
First, light in a cavity can be much more intense for the same input power, because of the spatial (modal volume V) and temporal (lifetime Q) confinement. We show that this enhances second-harmonic (χ(2)) conversion by a factor of Q3/V and enhances third-harmonic (χ(3)) conversion by a factor of Q2/V. Second, there is no phase-matching condition per se for 100% conversion; the only absolute requirement is that the cavity support two modes of the requisite frequencies. However, there is a constant factor in the power that is determined by an overlap integral between the mode field patterns; in the limit of a very large cavity, this overlap integral recovers the phase-matching condition for (χ(2)) processes. Third, the frequency conversion no longer saturates instead, it peaks (at 100%, with proper design) for a certain critical input power satisfying a resonant condition, and goes to zero if the power is either too small or too large.
Second-harmonic generation in cavities with a single resonant mode at the pump frequency or the harmonic frequency requires much higher power than a doubly resonant cavity, approaching one Watt and/or requiring amplification within the cavity. A closely related case is that of sum-frequency generation in a cavity resonant at the two frequencies being summed. Second-harmonic generation in a doubly resonant cavity, with a resonance at both the pump and harmonic frequencies, has most commonly been analyzed in the low-efficiency limit where nonlinear down-conversion can be neglected, but down-conversion has also been included by some authors.
Here, one can show that not only is down-conversion impossible to neglect at high conversion efficiencies (and is, in fact, necessary to conserve energy), but also that it leads to a critical power where harmonic conversion is maximized. This critical power was demonstrated numerically in a sub-optimal geometry where 100% efficiency is impossible, but does not seem to have been clearly explained theoretically.
According to one aspect of the invention, there is provided a nonlinear harmonic generation system comprising. The nonlinear harmonic generation system includes a waveguide channel receives and propagates electromagnetic signals. A resonant cavity is coupled to the waveguide channel. The resonant cavity structure includes a plurality of resonant modes into which electromagnetic energy is coupled during the operation of the system. One of the resonant modes includes a resonant frequency that changes during operation of the system to reach either an input-signal frequency or a harmonic frequency for a majority of the time in which harmonic generation is occurring. Both reflected and harmonic fields are emitted back into the waveguide channel so as to allow efficient harmonic generation at a specified critical input power.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of performing nonlinear harmonic conversion. The method includes positioning a waveguide channel for receiving and propagating electromagnetic signals. Also, the method includes coupling a resonant cavity to the waveguide channel. The resonant cavity structure includes a plurality of resonant modes into which electromagnetic energy is coupled during the operation of the system. Moreover, the method includes changing the frequency of one of the resonant modes during operation of the system to reach either an input-signal frequency or a harmonic frequency for a majority of the time in which harmonic generation is occurring. Both reflected and harmonic fields are emitted back into the waveguide channel so as to allow efficient harmonic generation at a specified critical input power.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided an oscillator system. The oscillator system includes a waveguide channel for receiving and propagating electromagnetic signals. A resonant cavity is coupled to the waveguide channel. The resonant cavity structure includes a plurality of resonant modes into which electromagnetic energy is coupled during the operation of the system. The resonant modes are coupled by a Kerr nonlinearity, where reflected fields are emitted back into the waveguide channel with a specified power having oscillations that include a frequency substantially lower than any frequency of the input electromagnetic wave.
The invention provides an approach to achieving 100% third-harmonic conversion in doubly-resonant optical cavities with Kerr nonlinearities, even when dynamical stability and self-phase modulation (which can drive the cavities out of resonance) are included, and describe the initial conditions required to excite these efficient solutions.
In particular, one can show that such doubly-resonant nonlinear optical systems can display a rich variety of dynamical behaviors, including multistability, (such as different steady states excited by varying initial conditions, a richer version of the bistable phenomenon observed in single-mode cavities), gap solutions, long-period limit cycles (similar to the “self-pulsing” observed for second-harmonic generation), and transitions in the stability and multiplicity of solutions as the parameters are varied. One reason is doubly resonant cavities lower the power requirements for nonlinear devices, and in particular for third harmonic conversion, compared to singly-resonant cavities or nonresonant structures. An appreciation and understanding of these behaviors is important to design efficient harmonic converters, but it also opens the possibility of new types of devices enabled by other aspects of the nonlinear dynamics. For example, strong Kerr nonlinearities are desired in the context of quantum information theory for use in low-loss photon entanglement and other single-photon applications. In a Kerr (χ(3)) medium, there is a change in the refractive index proportional to the square of the electric field; for an oscillating field at a frequency w, this results in a shift in the index at the same frequency (self-phase modulation, SPM), generation of power at the third-harmonic frequency 3ω, and also other effects when multiple frequencies are present [cross-phase modulation (XPM) and four-wave mixing (FWM)]. When the field is confined in a cavity, restricting to a small modal volume V for a long time given by the quality factor Q (a lifetime in units of the optical period), such nonlinear effects are enhanced by both the increased field strength for the same input power and by the frequency sensitivity inherent in resonant effects (since the fractional bandwidth is 1/Q). This enhancement is exploited, for example, in nonlinear harmonic and sum-frequency generation, most commonly for χ(2) effects where the change in index is proportional to the electric field, which requires a non-centrosymmetric material.
One can further enhance harmonic generation by using a cavity with two resonant modes, one at the source frequency and one at the harmonic frequency In this case, one must also take into account a nonlinear down-conversion process that competes with harmonic generation, but it turns out to be theoretically possible to obtain 100% harmonic conversion for either χ(2)(ω→2ω) or χ(3)(ω→3ω) nonlinearities at a specific “critical” input power Pcrit, both in an one-dimensional model of propagating waves for χ(2) nonlinearities and also in a more general coupled-mode model for either χ(2) or χ(3) nonlinearities.
In particular, the harmonic-generation and downconversion processes are analyzed in a broad class of model systems depicted in
The two resonant modes are nonlinearly coupled by a Kerr (χ(3))) nonlinearity.
The input channel structure 4 can include any standard waveguide structure for guiding an electromagnetic signal. The incoming and outgoing amplitude S1+, S1− and S3 are associated with reflected and harmonic fields are emitted back into the input channel 4. The lifetimes Q1, Q2 are associated with amplitudes a1, a3 of the two resonant modes in the resonant cavity 6. In accordance with the invention, 100% harmonic generation is predicted at a critical power Pcrit proportional to V/Q3 for χ(2) and V/Q2 for χ(3). However, the steady-state solution of the system is analyzed and not its dynamics or stability. Moreover, in the χ(3) case there can also be an SPM and XPM effect that shifts the cavity frequencies out of resonance and spoils the harmonic-generation effect. Both of these effects are considered, describe how to compensate for SPM and XPM, and demonstrate the different regimes of stability in such χ(3) doubly resonant systems. One can show that the parameters and the initial conditions must be chosen within certain regimes to obtain a stable steady state with high conversion efficiency.
The resonant cavity 6 can have a plurality of resonant modes into which electromagnetic energy is coupled during the operation of the system 2. One of the resonant modes includes a resonant frequency that changes during operation of said system 2 to reach either an input-signal frequency or a harmonic frequency for a majority of the time in which harmonic generation is occurring. Both reflected and harmonic fields are emitted back into said input channel 4 so as to allow efficient harmonic generation at a specified critical input power. This system 2 can include harmonic-generation efficiency between 20-100%.
In other regimes, one can demonstrate radically different behaviors: not only low-efficiency steady states, but also limit-cycle solutions where the efficiency oscillates slowly with a repetition period of many thousands of optical cycles. With infrared light, these limit cycles form a kind of optical oscillator (clock) with a period in the hundreds of GHz or THz (and possibly lower, depending on the cavity parameters). Previously, limit-cycle (self-pulsing) behaviors have been observed in a number of other nonlinear optical systems, such as: doubly-resonant χ(2) cavities coupled by second-harmonic generation; bistable multimode Kerr cavities with time-delayed nonlinearities; nonresonant distributed feedback in Bragg gratings; and a number of nonlinear lasing devices.
However, the system considered in this invention seems unusually simple, especially among χ(3) systems, in that it only requires two modes and an instantaneous Kerr nonlinearity, with a constant-frequency input source, to attain self-pulsing, and partly as a consequence of this simplicity the precise self-pulsing solution is quite insensitive to the initial conditions. In other nonlinear optical systems where self-pulsing was observed, others have also observed chaotic solutions in certain regimes. Here, chaos is not observed for any of the parameter regimes considered, where the input was a constant-frequency source, but it is possible that chaotic solutions may be excited by an appropriate pulsed input as in the χ(2) case.
Another interesting phenomenon that can occur in nonlinear systems is multistability, where there are multiple possible steady-state solutions that one can switch among by varying the initial conditions. In Kerr χ(3) media, an important example of this phenomenon is bistable transmission through nonlinear cavities: for transmission through a single-mode cavity, output can switch discontinuously between a high-transmission and a low-transmission state in a hysteresis effect that results from SPM. For example, if one turns on the power gradually from zero the system stays in the low-transmission state, but if the power is increased further and then decreased to the original level, the system can be switched to the high-transmission state. This effect, which has been observed experimentally, can be used for all-optical logic, switching, rectification, and many other functions. In a cavity with multiple closely-spaced resonances, where the nonlinearity is strong enough to shift one cavity mode's frequency to another's, the same SPM phenomenon can lead to more than two stable solutions. Here, one can demonstrate a much richer variety of multistable phenomena in the doubly-resonant case for widely-separated cavity frequencies coupled by harmonic generation in addition to SPM not only can there be more than two stable states, but the transitions between them can exhibit complicated oscillatory behaviors as the initial conditions are varied, and there are also Hopf bifurcations into self-pulsing solutions.
The basic theory of frequency conversion in doubly-resonant cavities with nonlinearities, including the undesirable self- and cross-phase modulation effects are analyzed, and explain the existence of a solution with 100% harmonic conversion (without considering stability).
Consider a waveguide coupled to a doubly resonant cavity with two resonant frequencies ω3cav=ω1 and ω3cav=ω3=3ω1 (below, we will shift ωkcav to differ slightly from ωk), and corresponding lifetimes τ1 and τ3 describing their radiation rates into the waveguide (or quality factors Qk=ωkτk/2). In addition, these modes are coupled to one another via the Kerr nonlinearity. Because all of these couplings are weak, any such system (regardless of the specific geometry), can be accurately described by temporal coupled-mode theory, in which the system is modeled as a set of coupled ordinary differential equations representing the amplitudes of the different modes, with coupling constants and frequencies determined by the specific geometry. In particular, the coupled-mode equations for this particular class of geometries are commonly known along with explicit equations for the coupling coefficients in a particular geometry. The degrees of freedom are the field amplitude ak of the kth cavity mode (normalized so that |ak| is the corresponding energy) and the field amplitude Sk± of the incoming (+) and outgoing (−) waveguide modes at ωk (normalized so that |sk±|2 is the corresponding power), as depicted schematically in
The α and β coefficients are geometry and material-dependent constants that express the strength of various nonlinear effects for the given modes. The α1j terms describe self- and cross-phase modulation effects: they clearly give rise to effective frequency shifts in the two modes. The βi term characterize the energy transfer between the modes: the β3 term describes frequency up-conversion and the β1 term describes down-conversion. As shown, they are related to one another via conservation of energy ω1β1=ω3β3*, and all of the nonlinear coefficients scale inversely with the modal volume V.
There are three different ad parameters (two SPM coefficients α11 and α33 and one XPM coefficient α13=α31). All three values are different, in general, but are determined by similar integrals of the field patterns, produce similar frequency-shifting phenomena, and all scale as 1/V. Therefore, in order to limit the parameter space analyzed in the invention, one can consider the simplified case where all three frequency-shifting terms have the same strength αij=α is considered.
One can also include various losses, e.g. linear losses correspond to a complex ω1 and/or ω3, and nonlinear two-photon absorption corresponds to a complex α. It is found that such considerations do not qualitatively change the results, only reducing the efficiency somewhat, as long as the losses are not too big compared to the radiative lifetimes τ, and so in this case the invention is restricted to the idealized lossless case.
The efficiency decreases if the power is either too low (in the linear regime) or too high (dominated by down-conversion). Pcrit scales as V/Q2, so one can in principle obtain very low-power efficient harmonic conversion by increasing Q and/or decreasing V. Including absorption or other losses decreases the peak efficiency, but does not otherwise qualitatively change this solution.
There are two effects not previously not analyzed in detail, however, which can degrade this promising solution: nonlinear frequency shifts and instability. Here, the frequency shifts are first considered, which arise whenever α≠0, and consider stability hereinafter. The problem with the α terms is that efficient harmonic conversion depends on the cavities being tuned to harmonic frequencies ω3=3 ω1; a nonlinear shift in the cavity frequencies due to self- and cross-phase modulation will spoil this resonance. In principle, there is a straightforward solution to this problem, as depicted in
More precisely, to compute the required amount of pre-shifting, one can examine the coupled-mode equations EQs. (1-2). First, one can solve for the critical power Pcrit assuming α=0, and obtain the corresponding critical cavity fields a αkcrit:
Then, these critical fields are substituted into the coupled-mode equations for α≠0, and solve for the new cavity frequencies ωkcav so as to cancel the terms and make the αkcrit solutions still valid. This yields the following transformation of the cavity frequencies:
By inspection, when substituted into EQs. (1-2) at the critical power, these yield the same steady-state solution as for α=0. There are two other appearances of ω1 and ω3 in the coupled-mode equations, in the βk terms, but we need not change these frequencies because that is a higher-order effect, and the derivation of the coupled-mode equations considered only first-order terms in χ(3).
The nonlinear dynamics turn out to depend only on four dimensionless parameters: τ3/τ1=Q3/3Q1, α11/β1, α33/β1, and α13/β1=α31/β1. The overall scale of Q, α etcetera, merely determines the absolute scale for the power requirements: it is clear from the equations that multiplying all α and β coefficients by an overall constant K can be compensated by dividing all α and s amplitudes by √{square root over (K)}, which happens automatically for s at the critical power by EQ. (3); the case of scaling τ1,3 by an overall constant is more subtle and is considered below. As mentioned above, for simplicity we take α11=α33=α13=α31=α. Therefore, in the subsequent sections we will analyze the asymptotic efficiency as a function of τ3/τ1 and α/β1.
So far, a steady-state solution as been found to the coupled-mode equations, including self- and cross-phase modulation, which achieves 100% third-harmonic conversion.
To understand the dynamics and stability of the nonlinear coupled-mode equations, one can apply the standard technique of identifying fixed points of the equations and analyzing the stability of the linearized equations around each fixed point.
By a “fixed point,” corresponds to a steady-state solution to an input frequency ω1(s1+˜e−iω
As mentioned above, the dynamics are independent of the overall scale of τ1,3, and depend only on the ratio τ3/τ1. This can be seen from the equations for A1,3, in which the ω1,3 oscillation has been removed. In these equations, if one can multiply τ1 and τ3 by an overall constant factor K, after some algebra it can be shown that the A1,3 equations are invariant if we rescale A1→A1/√{square root over (K)}, A3→A3/√{square root over (K)}, rescale time t→Kt, and rescale the input s1→s1+/K, which happens automatically for the critical power by EQ. (3). Note also that the conversion efficiency |s3−/s1+|2=(2/τ3)|A3/s1+|2 is also invariant under this resealing by K. That is, the powers and the timescales of the dynamics change if you change the lifetimes, unsurprisingly, but the steady states, stability, etcetera are unaltered.
Given the steady-state solutions (the roots), their stability is determined by linearizing the original equations around these points to a first-order linear equation of the form dx/dt=Ax; a stable solution is one for which the eigenvalues of A have negative real parts (leading to solutions that decay exponentially towards the fixed point).
The results of this fixed-point and stability analysis are shown in
For τ3>τ1, the 100%-efficiency solution is unstable, but there are lower-efficiency steady-state solutions and also another interesting phenomenon: limit cycles. A limit cycle is a stable oscillating-efficiency solution, one example of which (corresponding to point D in
In this example at point D in
To better understand the phase diagram of
The next two plots, in
The above analysis and results were for the steady-state-solutions when operating at the critical input power to obtain a 100%-efficiency solution. However, one can, of course, operate with a different input power—although no other input power will yield a 100%-efficient steady-state solution, different input powers may still be useful because the 100%-efficiency solution may be unstable or practically unattainable.
In contrast, the lower-efficiency stable solutions have much larger stable regions of the curve while still maintaining efficiencies greater than 70% at low powers comparable to Pcrit˜V/Q2, which suggests that they may be attractive regimes for practical operation when α/β1 is not small. This is further explored in the next section, and also by
One remaining concern in any multistable system is how to excite the desired solution—depending on the initial conditions, the system may fall into different stable solutions, and simply turning on the source at the critical input power may result in an undesired low-efficiency solution. If α/β1 is small enough, of course, then from
First, a simple technique is considered for exciting different solutions of a bistable filter: as shown in
In particular,
There are also many other ways to excite the high-efficiency solution (or whatever steady-state solution is desired). For example, because the cavity is initially de-tuned from the input frequency, much of the initial pulse power is actually reflected during the transient period, and a more efficient solution would vary the pulse frequency in time to match the cavity frequency as it detunes. One can also, of course, vary the initial pulse width or shape, and by optimizing the pulse shape one may obtain a more robust solution.
In particular, one can devise a different (constant-frequency) input pulse shape that robustly excites high-efficiency solution, insensitive to small changes in the initial conditions, by examining the power-bifurcation diagram in
If the power is further decreased, a high-efficiency stable solution reappears and the system must drop into this steady state (being the only stable solution at that point). This process of gradually decreasing the power is depicted in
As power is increased, starting from the high-efficiency steady-state solution below the critical power, the system first enters limit-cycle solutions when the power becomes large enough that the stable solution disappears in
The invention demonstrates a doubly-resonant cavity not only has high-efficiency harmonic conversion solutions for low input power, but also exhibits a number of other interesting phenomena. First, the invention demonstrates conditions under which the high-efficiency solution is stable. Second, multi-stable solutions are observed, which can be used for optical logic, switching, rectification, and other transistor-like functions similar to previous work on bistabiity in singly-resonant cavities. Third, there are “phase transitions” in which solutions switch from stable to unstable and vice versa. The number of stable solutions change, as in the input power and other parameters are varied (e.g. one could vary the Q of the resonator by mechanical changes to the geometry or via other phenomena such as charge-carrier injection, thermal changes, stress-optic coefficients and piezo-electric materials, nonlinear optical changes in the index via external illumination, and so on). Again, this could be used for switching, rectification, logic, amplification, and other transistor-like functions that rely on rapid nonlinear changes in input/output characteristics.
Also, the existence of limit-cycle behaviors are shown, which allow one to construct long-period optical oscillators in the GHz-THz regimes, for applications such as optical clocks, modulator/demodulators, spectroscopy, ultra-fast signal processing, high-speed data transmission, digital radar, tomography, and other applications. In addition, the invention allows one to excite different solutions by various transient input-pulse shapes preceding the steady-state input, including how to robustly excite a particular high-efficiency solution, and to adiabatically switch between multiple solutions and limit cycles.
Simulations illustrate where losses (such as linear losses, radiative loss, absorption, two-photon absorption, etc.) were included, and found that the results and existence of limit cycles, etc. do not qualitatively change, they merely operate at a somewhat lower efficiency (depending on the degree of the losses).
Similar phenomena occur in χ(2) nonlinear media for second-harmonic generation. There, it is found that the 100%-efficiency solution is indeed stable, in this case for all parameters τ1,2 and nonlinear coupling factors β; unlike the χ(3) case, there is no lifetime where the solution becomes unstable, nor are there SPM/XPM effects in χ(2) media (and hence no detuning is required). Moreover, one finds limit cycles in the χ(2) case, which arise for input powers different from the χ(2) Pcrit.
Finally, similar phenomena should also arise in doubly and triply resonant cavities coupled nonlinearly by sum/difference frequency generation (for χ(2)) or four-wave mixing (for χ(3)). The advantage of this is that the coupled frequencies can lie closer together, imposing less stringent materials constraints and allowing the cavity to be confined by narrow-bandwidth mechanisms such as photonic bandgaps. For example, one could have a triply-resonant cavity with frequencies (ω1,2,3, where ω3=ω1±(ω2−ω3), where there is a pump input at frequency ω3 that resonantly converts light at a frequency ω1 to a frequency ω3 via χ(3) four-wave mixing.
Although the present invention has been shown and described with respect to several preferred embodiments thereof, various changes, omissions and additions to the form and detail thereof, may be made therein, without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
This application claims priority from provisional application Ser. No. 61/055,804 filed May 23, 2008, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
This invention was made with government support awarded by the U.S. Army Research Office under Contract No. W911NF-07-D-004 and the Department of Energy Computational Science Fellowship under Contract No. DE-FG02-97ER25308. The government has certain rights in the invention.
Number | Date | Country | |
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61055804 | May 2008 | US |