Leo, FCoen, StephaneKockaert, PGorza, SPEmplit, PHaelterman, M2012-03-302010-07NATURE PHOTONICS 4(7):471-476 01 Jul 20101749-4885http://hdl.handle.net/2292/16149Temporal cavity solitons are packets of light persisting in a continuously driven nonlinear resonator. They are robust attracting states, readily excited through a phase-insensitive and wavelength-insensitive process. As such, they constitute an ideal support for bits in an optical buffer that would seamlessly combine three critical telecommunication functions, namely all-optical storage, all-optical reshaping and wavelength conversion. Here, with standard silica optical fibres, we report the first experimental observation of temporal cavity solitons. The cavity solitons are 4 ps long and are used to demonstrate storage of a data stream for more than a second. We also observe interactions of close cavity solitons, revealing for our set-up a potential capacity of up to 45,000 bits at 25 Gbit s(-1). More fundamentally, cavity solitons are localized dissipative structures. Therefore, given that silica exhibits a pure instantaneous Kerr nonlinearity, our experiment constitutes one of the simplest examples of self-organization phenomena in nonlinear optics.Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. Previously published items are made available in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Details obtained from http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/issn/1749-4885/https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htmFIBER RING-RESONATORLOCALIZED STRUCTURESMODULATION-INSTABILITYDISSIPATIVE SOLITONSFEEDBACK SOLITONSBISTABILITYSYSTEMSGENERATIONMEMORYLIGHTTemporal cavity solitons in one-dimensional Kerr media as bits in an all-optical bufferJournal Article10.1038/nphoton.2010.120Copyright: Nature Publishing Grouphttp://purl.org/eprint/accessRights/RestrictedAccess