Dynamics of interacting cavity solitons
- 12 January 2026
- journal article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review E
- Vol. 113 (1) , 014207
Abstract
We derive the equations governing the motion of Kerr solitons in pair waveforms. Recent experiments in microresonators have studied a variety of interaction effects in multisoliton waveforms, including collisions and formation of soliton molecules and crystals. Here we analyze the effective interaction that arises from the coupling of the soliton-tail overlap nonlinearity with global soliton variables associated with the breaking of translation symmetry. The interaction is either purely repulsive, or alternates between attraction and repulsion, according to whether the decay of the soliton tails is monotone or oscillatory. In the latter case, stable fixed points of the effective dynamical system signify stable soliton molecule configuration, but the exponential weakening of the interaction with increasing intersoliton separation may prevent the molecule from forming in experimentally accessible time scales. Our theory becomes asymptotically exact in the large-separation limit, and we verify the theoretical calculations using soliton trajectories extracted from direct numerical solutions of the wave equation.Keywords
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Funding Information
- Israel Science Foundation (2403/20)
- National Science Foundation (ECCS-1807272)
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-20-1-0357)
- Office of the Secretary of Defense (HQ0034-20-2-0007)
- Office of the Secretary of Defense (HQ0034-24-2-0001)
- National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (2022138-142232)
- National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (2023200-142386)
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