Emergent nonlinear phenomena in a driven dissipative photonic dimer

Collective effects leading to spatial, temporal or spatiotemporal pattern formation in complex nonlinear systems driven out of equilibrium cannot be described at the single-particle level and are therefore often called emergent phenomena. They are characterized by length scales exceeding the characteristic interaction length and by spontaneous symmetry breaking. Recent advances in integrated photonics have indicated that the study of emergent phenomena is possible in complex coupled nonlinear optical systems. Here we demonstrate that the out-of-equilibrium driving of a strongly coupled pair of photonic integrated Kerr microresonators (‘dimer’)—which, at the ‘single particle’ (that is, individual resonator) level, generate well-understood dissipative Kerr solitons—exhibits emergent nonlinear phenomena. By exploring the dimer phase diagram, we find regimes of soliton hopping, spontaneous symmetry breaking and periodically emerging (in)commensurate dispersive waves. These phenomena are not included in the single-particle description and are related to the parametric frequency conversion between the hybridized supermodes. Moreover, by electrically controlling the supermode hybridization, we achieve wide tunability of spectral interference patterns between the dimer solitons and dispersive waves. Our findings represent a step towards the study of emergent nonlinear phenomena in soliton networks and multimodal lattices. A pair of strongly coupled photonic microresonators shows nonlinear emergent behaviour, which can be understood by incorporating interactions in the theoretical description of nonlinear optical systems.