ArXiv · 2026
Integrated Kerr frequency combs are powerful tools for microwave photonics, spectroscopy, and optical communications. While traditional architectures rely on the anomalous-dispersion regime, this typically requires thick, highly strained silicon nitride layers that complicate standard CMOS-foundry fabrication. Thinner layers circumvent these fabrication constraints but yield normal-dispersion microcombs that generally require specific trigger mechanisms, such as deterministic seeding, due to the absence of spontaneous modulational instability. Here, we demonstrate the generation of a 20 GHz microcomb in the normal-dispersion regime, driven by a synchronized dual-pump scheme via electro-optic sidebands modulation. The platform leverages an Archimedean spiral geometry on a foundry-compatible, 350 nm-thin SiN platform. By employing adiabatic curvature engineering, the resonator balances a compact footprint with an intrinsic quality factor exceeding 7 × 10⁶, while effectively eliminating avoided mode crossings with higher order modes. This strong-dispersion architecture yields a low-repetition-rate microcomb featuring high power-per-line and picosecond-scale temporal profile, which enables the direct optical sampling and characterization of the out-coupled switching wave waveforms. The measured dynamics across a range of pump desynchronizations demonstrate excellent agreement with simulations. Our work establishes a scalable, strategy for footprint-efficient normal-dispersion microcomb generation at microwave frequencies, with potential for scaling to other wavelength ranges.
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