The availability of optical frequency comb devices with extreme temporal coherence allowed the development of spectroscopic instruments with unprecedented ultrabroad band and high-speed capabilities. Recently, significant efforts have been devoted to the development of compact frequency combs based on the technology of silicon nitride microresonators, a particularly attractive platform for chip-scale frequency comb devices.

In this Optics Letters article, C. Joshi and coworkers demonstrated a fundamental step forward in the active control of the coherence properties of an optical frequency comb based on a silicon nitride microresonator implementing integrated heaters for the thermal control of the soliton mode-locking regimes. This solution greatly simplifies the control of the microresonator resonance frequencies and will allow the generation of ultra-narrow linewidth chip-based optical frequency combs. Moreover, this technique will enable the generation of simultaneous optical combs that share the same single-frequency pump source.

The combination of the frequency comb and microresonator technologies in a compact, robust, and portable single device will open new perspectives in a wide range of high-performance lab-on-a-chip on-site spectroscopic sensing.

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