Generation of optical combs in a whispering gallery mode resonator from a bichromatic pump

An optical comb is shown to arise from a whispering gallery mode resonator pumped by two optical frequencies. Two externally excited modes couple due to Kerr nonlinearity to initially empty modes and give rise to new frequency components. This thresholdless process is much more efficient than the previously reported single-pump four-wave mixing. As a result, a few milliwatt pump is sufficient to generate strong secondary fields that efficiently generate higher-order frequency components and so on in a cascade process leading to an optical comb.