Dynamics of Raman Cavity Solitons in Passive Kerr Resonators

Coherently-driven passive Kerr resonators have attracted significant attention over the past decade due to their fascinating nonlinear dynamics and applications. We recently discovered that such resonators, when made from a material with broadband Raman gain (e.g. silica glass), can, under suitable conditions, permit the generation of novel dissipative Raman solitons that are qualitatively different from the conventional Kerr cavity solitons that have been widely explored [1], [2]. Remarkably, despite being generated in macroscopic resonators made from standard telecommunication optical fibre, these Raman solitons come with ultrashort durations as low as 40 fs, and thanks to phase-coherent driving, exhibit ultra-low-noise - a feature in stark contrast to earlier implementations of pulsed Raman lasers [3]. On top of the apparent practical interests of a novel pathway to ultrashort duration pulses, our preliminary studies also reveal that the Raman solitons display a wealth of novel dynamical phenomena. In this contribution, we experimentally and theoretically explore the multi-pulsing dynamics of the dissipative Raman solitons, demonstrating that a variety of multi-soliton states can be deterministically generated and that the resultant solitons display complex interactions due to their common energy reservoir.