Photonic frequency microcombs based on dissipative Kerr and quadratic cavity solitons

Optical frequency comb, with precisely controlled spectral lines spanning a broad range, has been the key enabling technology for many scientific breakthroughs. In addition to the traditional implementation based on mode-locked lasers, photonic frequency microcombs based on dissipative Kerr and quadratic cavity solitons in high-Q microresonators have become invaluable in applications requiring compact footprint, low cost, good energy efficiency, large comb spacing, and access to nonconventional spectral regions. In this review, we comprehensively examine the recent progress of photonic frequency microcombs and discuss how various phenomena can be utilized to enhance the microcomb performances that benefit a plethora of applications including optical atomic clockwork, optical frequency synthesizer, precision spectroscopy, astrospectrograph calibration, biomedical imaging, optical communications, coherent ranging, and quantum information science.