Programmable frequency combs with laser cavity solitons

We numerically study programmable laser cavity soliton generation within a nested cavity architecture. The nested architecture includes a fibered Fabry-Pérot resonator as well as a photonic device used as a programmable delay-line, which enables repetition rate control from GHz to THz. In the proposed approach, the pulse repetition rate is adjusted based on a temporal interleaving process obtained after propagation through the programmable delay-line structure. Our numerical study demonstrates how a programmable delay-line can be leveraged to obtain a highly-tunable passively mode-locked laser via harmonic mode-locking, featuring the formation of an energy efficient yet reconfigurable laser cavity soliton pulses. In particular, we outline practical guidelines for experimental implementation, and the proposed architecture is expected to provide enhanced versatility for compact and tunable frequency comb generation.