Kerr frequency combs and triangular spectra.

ABSTRACT

Nonlinear externally driven optical cavities are known to generate periodic patterns. They grow from the linearly unstable background states due to modulation instability. These periodic solutions are also known as Kerr frequency combs, which have a variety of applications in metrology. The stationary state of periodic wave trains can be explained theoretically only in weakly nonlinear regimes near the onset of the instability using the order parameter description. However, in both weakly and strongly nonlinear dissipative regimes, only numerical solutions can be found. No analytic solutions are known so far except for the homogeneous continuous wave solution. Here, we derive an analytical expression for the intracavity fully nonlinear dissipative periodic wave train profiles that provides good agreement with the results of numerical simulations. Our approach is based on empirical knowledge of the triangular shape of the frequency comb spectrum.