TY - JOUR AU - Bao, Chengying AU - Suh, Myoung-Gyun AU - Shen, Boqiang AU - Şafak, Kemal AU - Dai, Anan AU - Wang, Heming AU - Wu, Lue AU - Yuan, Zhiquan AU - Yang, Qi-Fan AU - Matsko, Andrey B. AU - Kärtner, Franz X. AU - Vahala, Kerry J. TI - Quantum diffusion of microcavity solitons JO - Nature physics VL - 17 IS - 4 SN - 1745-2473 CY - Basingstoke PB - Nature Publishing Group M1 - PUBDB-2021-05168 SP - 462 - 466 PY - 2021 N1 - Waiting for fulltext AB - Coherently pumped (Kerr) solitons in an ideal optical microcavity are expected to undergo random quantum motion thatdetermines fundamental performance limits in applications ofthe soliton microcombs1. Here this random walk and its impacton Kerr soliton timing jitter are studied experimentally. Thequantum limit is discerned by measuring the relative positionof counter-propagating solitons2. Their relative motion features weak interactions and also presents common-mode suppression of technical noise, which typically hides the quantumfluctuations. This is in contrast to co-propagating solitons,which are found to have relative timing jitter well below thequantum limit of a single soliton on account of strong correlation of their mutual motion. Good agreement is found betweentheory and experiment. The results establish the fundamentallimits to timing jitter in soliton microcombs and provide newinsights on multisoliton physics. LB - PUB:(DE-HGF)16 UR - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000611495900002 DO - DOI:10.1038/s41567-020-01152-5 UR - https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/472674 ER -