Bandwidth shaping of microresonator-based frequency combs via dispersion engineering

We investigate experimentally and theoretically the role of group-velocity dispersion and higher-order dispersion on the bandwidth of microresonator-based parametric frequency combs. We show that the comb bandwidth and the power contained in the comb can be tailored for a particular application. Additionally, our results demonstrate that fourth-order dispersion plays a critical role in determining the spectral bandwidth for comb bandwidths on the order of an octave. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America