Published in Nature on April 16, 2025, the article “Driven bright solitons on a mid-infrared laser chip” features the work of an international team including Marco Piccardo, professor at Instituto Superior Técnico and researcher at INESC Microssistemas e Nanotecnologias.

The team successfully generated bright solitons—ultrafast, self-stabilizing light pulses—using just two miniature infrared lasers integrated on a single chip. Until now, it was believed that such pulses required large and complex systems.

💡 The idea first came to Marco Piccardo in early 2020, after a conversation with renowned physicist Luigi Lugiato, co-author of the celebrated Lugiato-Lefever equation. That spark led to a breakthrough solution for creating bright solitons in a compact and practical platform.

This achievement opens the door to compact, energy-efficient photonic technologies for ultrafast data transmission and spectroscopy in the mid-infrared range.

👏 A major step toward next-generation integrated photonics!

Illustration of the device, which combines two lasers on a chip. Image credits: Dmitry Kazakov