Walk-Off-Induced Modulation Instability, Temporal Pattern Formation, and Frequency Comb Generation in Cavity-Enhanced Second-Harmonic Generation
Journal article, 2016

We derive a time-domain mean-field equation to model the full temporal and spectral dynamics of light in singly resonant cavity-enhanced second-harmonic generation systems. We show that the temporal walk-off between the fundamental and the second-harmonic fields plays a decisive role under realistic conditions, giving rise to rich, previously unidentified nonlinear behavior. Through linear stability analysis and numerical simulations, we discover a new kind of quadratic modulation instability which leads to the formation of optical frequency combs and associated time-domain dissipative structures. Our numerical simulations show excellent agreement with recent experimental observations of frequency combs in quadratic nonlinear media [Phys. Rev. A 91, 063839 (2015)]. Thus, in addition to unveiling a new, experimentally accessible regime of nonlinear dynamics, our work enables predictive modeling of frequency comb generation in cavity-enhanced second-harmonic generation systems. We expect our findings to have wide impact on the study of temporal and spectral dynamics in a diverse range of dispersive, quadratically nonlinear resonators.

Author

F. Leo

University of Auckland

Tobias Hansson

Chalmers, Physics, Condensed Matter Theory

University of Brescia

I. Ricciardi

CNR-INO

M. De Rosa

CNR-INO

S. Coen

University of Auckland

S. Wabnitz

University of Brescia

CNR-INO

M. Erkintalo

University of Auckland

Physical Review Letters

0031-9007 (ISSN) 1079-7114 (eISSN)

Vol. 116 3 033901

Subject Categories

Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.033901

More information

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4/6/2022 1