Integrated frequency-comb sources are a key enabling technology for frequency-metrology applications. Their on-chip integration promises to bring metrology capacity outside of the laboratory, particularly since they can operate at low continuous-wave pump laser power in the dissipative Kerr soliton (DKS) regime. Yet such a small footprint and low power come at a cost: higher noise and overall lower comb power. In particular, this translates to highly challenging detection and locking of the carrier-envelope offset, which is necessary for complete stabilization of the comb. Recently, Kerr-induced synchronization (KIS) of a DKS to a reference laser was demonstrated as a tool for passive all-optical stabilization of DKS microcombs, with fundamental modification to the DKS and microcomb properties. Here, we demonstrate that the combination of additional power from the reference laser (now part of the DKS) and the KIS phase locking that pins the repetition rate together fundamentally alters the DKS, forcing an energy redistribution to maintain its center of mass. We demonstrate this self-balancing effect theoretically, which in a pure quadratic dispersion resonator leads to reference-dependent recoil. With higher-order dispersion through which the DKS generates phase-matched dispersive waves (DWs), we show that self-balancing results in the enhancement of the high-frequency DW power, offering an all-optical pathway for efficient carrier-envelope-offset detection in octave-spanning microcombs.

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• Frequency combs & self-phase locking
• Integrated optics
• Optical solitons
• Photonics