近日，美国加州理工学院的Alireza Marandi及其研究团队取得一项新进展。经过不懈努力，他们研制出拓扑暂锁模激光器。相关研究成果已于2024年3月1日在国际知名学术期刊《自然—物理学》上发表。
在这项工作中，研究人员从理论上提出并实验实现了拓扑暂锁模激光器。研究人员在激光腔中展示了非线性驱动的非厄米皮肤效应，并观察了激光对无序诱导定位的鲁棒性。该实验展示了先前在光子学实验中无法获得的基础点间隙拓扑物理，并且其表明该研究的锁模激光器在传感、光学计算和鲁棒拓扑频率梳方面的潜在应用。此外，本研究中采用的实验架构也为研究其他锁模光子源的拓扑结构提供了模板，包括耗散腔孤子和同步泵浦光参量振荡器。
据悉，锁模激光器在现代科学技术中起着至关重要的作用。它们对于超快光学和非线性光学的研究至关重要，在计量、电信和成像等领域都有应用。近年来，人们对锁模激光器的拓扑现象进行了研究。从基础的角度来看，该研究有望揭示非线性拓扑物理，从实用的角度来看，它可能导致拓扑保护短脉冲源的发展。尽管有这样的前景，但拓扑光子晶格与激光锁模之间的相互作用尚未得到实验研究。
附：英文原文
Title: Topological temporally mode-locked laser
Author: Leefmans, Christian R., Parto, Midya, Williams, James, Li, Gordon H. Y., Dutt, Avik, Nori, Franco, Marandi, Alireza
Issue&Volume: 2024-03-01
Abstract: Mode-locked lasers play a crucial role in modern science and technology. They are essential to the study of ultrafast and nonlinear optics, and they have applications in metrology, telecommunications and imaging. Recently, there has been interest in studying topological phenomena in mode-locked lasers. From a fundamental perspective, such study promises to reveal nonlinear topological physics, and from a practical perspective it may lead to the development of topologically protected short-pulse sources. Despite this promising outlook, the interplay between topological photonic lattices and laser mode-locking has not been studied experimentally. In this work, we theoretically propose and experimentally realize a topological temporally mode-locked laser. We demonstrate a nonlinearity-driven non-Hermitian skin effect in a laser cavity and observe the robustness of the laser against disorder-induced localization. Our experiments demonstrate fundamental point-gap topological physics that was previously inaccessible to photonics experiments, and they suggest potential applications of our mode-locked laser to sensing, optical computing and robust topological frequency combs. The experimental architecture employed in this work also provides a template for studying topology in other mode-locked photonic sources, including dissipative cavity solitons and synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillators.
DOI: 10.1038/s41567-024-02420-4
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-024-02420-4