Ranging

Frequency comb

Interferometry

Ultrashort pulse

Optoelectronics

Physics

Lidar

Parallel computing

Computer science

Optics

Massively parallel

Laser

Photonics

Telecommunications

Science

Light detection and ranging (LIDAR) is critical to many fields in science and industry. Over the last decade, optical frequency combs were shown to offer unique advantages in optical ranging, in particular when it comes to fast distance acquisition with high accuracy. However, current comb-based concepts are not suited for emerging high-volume applications such as drone navigation or autonomous driving. These applications critically rely on LIDAR systems that are not only accurate and fast, but also compact, robust, and amenable to cost-efficient mass-production. Here we show that integrated dissipative Kerr-soliton (DKS) comb sources provide a route to chip-scale LIDAR systems that combine sub-wavelength accuracy and unprecedented acquisition speed with the opportunity to exploit advanced photonic integration concepts for wafer-scale mass production. In our experiments, we use a pair of free-running DKS combs, each providing more than 100 carriers for massively parallel synthetic-wavelength interferometry. W...

Ultrafast optical ranging using microresonator soliton frequency combs