Experimental observations of breathing Kerr temporal cavity solitons at large detunings

It was recently predicted that, due to stimulated Raman scattering, temporal Kerr cavity solitons may exhibit oscillatory instabilities at large cavity detunings [Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 053902 (2018)]. Here, we report experimental observations of this behavior. To access the appropriate oscillatory regime, we construct a macroscopic fiber ring resonator with a high finesse of F approximate to 240. By synchronously driving the resonator with flat-top nanosecond pulses, we can reach very large intracavity power levels, where Raman-induced soliton oscillations can be observed. We also surprisingly find that, in the limit of large cavity driving strengths, new soliton instability regimes that are not accounted for in the known bifurcation structure of driven Kerr resonators can emerge even in the absence of Raman effects. Our experimental results are in good agreement with numerical simulations. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America