Third-harmonic blue light generation from Kerr clustered combs and dispersive waves

We demonstrated the deterministic generation of blue light emission (438 nm) via the third-harmonic process from an infrared pump by carefully engineering the dispersion of a high-quality-factor whispering gallery mode microcavity. We present two different approaches to obtaining broad bandwidth light. One is based on a clustered comb and the other employs a dispersive wave, and a broad Kerr comb spanning a half-octave is obtained. This allowed frequency conversion over a broad bandwidth ranging from 438 to 612 nm. This approach will enable the development of micro-scale light sources and frequency converters for future optical processing. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America