Theory of Solitons in Microresonators

This project will pursue development of a new theory describing frequency comb generation in microresonators. Optical frequency combs consisting of thousands of equally spaced narrow resonance lines have been demonstrated in the 1990s and their discovery has completely revolutionised precision measurements in frequency and time domains and enabled the development of optical clocks. The comb research was already awarded the Nobel Prize in 2005 (T. Hänsch and J. Hall) and is attracting an ever increasing attention with a steadily growing number of publications, citations and applications. In the past few years, this research field has witnessed an outstanding progress through the development of the microresonator technology and observation and exploitation of the microresonator frequency combs - microcombs. Microcombs are emerging as a disruptive technology for realizing precision metrology, frequency, and waveform synthesis and optical processing of information on a chipscale platform, which urgently requires a comprehensive theoretical understanding constituting a main topic of this PhD project.