Abstract
Despite the continuing progress in integrated optical frequency comb technology1, compact sources of short, bright pulses in the mid-infrared wavelength range from 3 to 12 μm so far remain beyond reach. The state-of-the-art ultrafast pulse emitters in the mid-infrared are complex, bulky and inefficient systems based on the downconversion of near-infrared or visible pulsed laser sources. Here we show a purely DC-driven semiconductor laser chip that generates 1-ps solitons at the centre wavelength of 8.3 μm at GHz repetition rates. The soliton generation scheme is akin to that of passive nonlinear Kerr resonators2. It relies on a fast bistability in active nonlinear laser resonators, unlike traditional passive mode-locking, which relies on saturable absorbers3, or active mode-locking by gain modulation in semiconductor lasers4. Monolithic integration of all components—drive laser, active ring resonator, coupler and pump filter—enables turnkey generation of bright solitons that remain robust for hours of continuous operation without active stabilization. Such devices can be readily produced at industrial laser foundries using standard fabrication protocols. Our work unifies the physics of active and passive microresonator frequency combs while simultaneously establishing a technology for nonlinear integrated photonics in the mid-infrared5.
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The experimental and numerical data generated in this study have been deposited in the Harvard Dataverse database and are available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/KH4HFZ under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0).
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Acknowledgements
This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant no. ECCS-2221715. T.P.L. thanks the Department of Defense (DoD) through the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship programme. N.O. and B.S. are supported by the European Research Council (853014). D.K. and T.P.L. thank K. Yang and Y. Song (Harvard University) for enlightening discussions.
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Contributions
M.Pi. and D.K. conceived the project. D.K. designed the devices and M.Be., S.D.C. and B.S. fabricated them. D.K. and T.P.L. designed the experiments. D.K., T.P.L., N.O. and P.R. carried out measurements and analysed data. L.L.C., M.Br., F.P. and L.A.L. developed the theory of driven active resonators and carried out numerical simulations. D.K. and M.Pi. developed the interactive GLLE solver. M.Pu., D.C. and T.D. manufactured an external cavity tunable laser. All authors participated in the production of the manuscript. B.S., M.Pi. and F.C. supervised the project.
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The authors declare the existence of a financial competing interest. The Office of Technology Development of Harvard University has begun the process of filing a patent application based on the materials of this work and is exploring commercialization opportunities for the presented technology.
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Supplementary Information
Supplementary Sections 1–7, including Supplementary Figs. 1–27.
Supplementary Data (exe)
Installer for GLLE solver (Win).
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Installer for GLLE solver (Mac).
Supplementary Video 1
An experimental recording of the mid-infrared spectrum analyser screen showing multistable driven soliton states in a ring QC active resonator. Whereas all parameters are kept nominally constant, the driven resonator switches between several possible states, corresponding to one or several solitons circulating inside the cavity.
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Kazakov, D., Letsou, T.P., Piccardo, M. et al. Driven bright solitons on a mid-infrared laser chip. Nature 641, 83–89 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08853-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08853-y
