arXiv subjects

Logan Courtright

Publications and source records attributed to Logan Courtright.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Fast Synergetic Simulation to Study Slow Evolution of Soliton Patterns in Optical Resonators

Complex patterns in physical and biological systems often emerge through slow collective dynamics governed by a small number of key variables. In nonlinear optical resonators, dissipative Kerr solitons provide an important example, where interactions between well-separated solitons can evolve over timescales far longer than the characteristic loss and gain timescales. Direct numerical simulation of these dynamics is challenging because stiffness forces conventional methods to resolve many rapidly damped degrees-of-freedom with very small time steps. We present a numerical scheme, the synergetic method, that eliminates these rapidly damped degrees-of-freedom and retains the slowly evolving modes, enabling time steps many orders of magnitude larger than those used in conventional approaches. Applied to soliton molecules in driven Kerr cavities, the method achieves speedups of $10^3$ to $10^5$ while capturing dynamics on laboratory timescales. We use it to model the full interaction dynamics of a three-soliton molecule and the evolution of an eight-soliton molecule. The approach provides an efficient framework for studying slow pattern formation in nonlinear systems with widely separated timescales.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2025

Dynamics of interacting cavity solitons

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 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 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 inter-soliton 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.

nlin.PS↗

arXiv2025

Mixed Fields Formulation for Electromagnetic Waves Confined in Dielectric Rings

We present an easy-to-implement numerical method for analyzing electromagnetic wave propagation in dielectric rings. Our approach employs a finite-difference-based solver in cylindrical coordinates, solving a mixed electric-magnetic field formulation to accurately enforce boundary conditions and compute resonant modes. The method avoids geometric transformations; instead, it directly discretizes the Helmholtz wave equation in cylindrical coordinates and solves the resulting generalized eigenvalue problem. We validate our model against commercial solvers for various structures, including a Si3N4 ring embedded in SiO2, a ring on a thin-film-coated substrate, and a torus, achieving agreement in effective refractive indices within 0.3%. The formulation accurately captures field confinement, curvature effects, and dispersion, enabling precise determination of propagation constants and mode profiles. As an application, we model optical frequency comb generation in a high-Q microresonator, predicting a free spectral range of 99.6 GHz and a loaded quality factor of 1.6 million, corroborated by experimental measurements.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2024

Multi-color solitons and frequency combs in microresonators

Multi-color solitons that are parametrically created in dual-pumped microresonators generate interleaved frequency combs that can be used to obtain combs at new frequencies and when synchronized can be used for low-noise microwave generation and potentially as an element in a chip-scale clockwork. Here, we first derive three-wave equations that describe multi-color solitons that appear in microresonators with a nearly quartic dispersion profile. These solitons are characterized by a single angular group velocity and multiple angular phase velocities. We then use these equations to explain the interleaved frequency combs that are observed at the output of the microresonator. Finally, we used these equations to describe the experimentally-observed soliton-OPO effect. In this effect, the pump frequency comb interacts nonlinearly with a signal frequency comb to create an idler frequency comb in a new frequency range, analogous to an optical parametric oscillation (OPO) process. We determine the conditions under which we expect this effect to occur. We anticipate that the three-wave equations and their extensions will be of use in designing new frequency comb systems and determining their stability and noise performance.

physics.optics↗