Induced Directional Switching of Platicon Microcombs in Photonic Crystal Ring Resonators
Abstract
Microcombs in normal-dispersion photonic crystal ring resonators (PhCRs) are versatile building blocks for next-generation integrated photonic circuits, but their inherent backward-propagation bias necessitates optical circulators or complex filtering for comb extraction, creating a significant bottleneck for full on-chip integration and precluding self-injection locking schemes. In this work, we introduce Side-mode Induced Forward Forcing (SIFF), a robust method to control and reverse this directionality. By engineering auxiliary mode splittings on resonances adjacent to the pump, we steer the nonlinear dynamics to favor stable, forward-propagating platicon states. We identify an optimal coupling condition that ensures forward-comb dominance across a wide parameter range. Our findings, validated numerically and experimentally, enable circulator-free, integrated normal-dispersion microcombs compatible with self-injection locking, offering a scalable architecture for compact telecommunications and sensing systems.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{lucas2026induced,
title = {{Induced Directional Switching of Platicon Microcombs in Photonic Crystal Ring Resonators}},
author = {Erwan Lucas and Su-Peng Yu and Jizhao Zang and Scott B. Papp},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2606.21437},
eprint = {2606.21437},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.21437},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Induced Directional Switching of Platicon Microcombs in Photonic Crystal Ring Resonators
AU - Erwan Lucas
AU - Su-Peng Yu
AU - Jizhao Zang
AU - Scott B. Papp
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/24
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2606.21437
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.21437
AB - Microcombs in normal-dispersion photonic crystal ring resonators (PhCRs) are versatile building blocks for next-generation integrated photonic circuits, but their inherent backward-propagation bias necessitates optical circulators or complex filtering for comb extraction, creating a significant bottleneck for full on-chip integration and precluding self-injection locking schemes. In this work, we introduce Side-mode Induced Forward Forcing (SIFF), a robust method to control and reverse this directionality. By engineering auxiliary mode splittings on resonances adjacent to the pump, we steer the nonlinear dynamics to favor stable, forward-propagating platicon states. We identify an optimal coupling condition that ensures forward-comb dominance across a wide parameter range. Our findings, validated numerically and experimentally, enable circulator-free, integrated normal-dispersion microcombs compatible with self-injection locking, offering a scalable architecture for compact telecommunications and sensing systems.
ER -