Injection-locked soliton microcomb against temporal drifting

The soliton microcomb offers a unique and compact solution for photonics applications. However, the microcomb is suffering from the perturbations arising from complex higher-order effects such as self-steepening and third-order dispersion, leading to the temporal drift of soliton and the deviation of repetition rate. It is unfavorable to the stability in time and frequency domains. In this work, we numerically and theoretically demonstrate that the injection-locking scheme can effectively eliminate the soliton temporal drift and repetition rate deviation caused by complex higher-order effects. The mechanism of eliminating drift and deviation is explained, and the theoretically predicted stable soliton temporal position agrees well with the simulation. The modulation depth plays a key role in suppressing drift, and an experimental guide for adjusting modulation depth is given. This work enriches soliton dynamics under complex higher-order effects and provides a scheme to improve the stability and controllability of microcombs.