Microresonators Offer Simpler Approach to Sensing With Light Pulses

Ultrashort optical pulses are becoming more and more relevant in a number of applications including distance measurement, molecular fingerprinting and ultrafast sampling. Many of these applications rely not only on a single stream of pulses — also known as optical frequency combs — but require two or even three of them. These multi-comb approaches significantly speed up acquisition time over conventional techniques.