Intensity trapping of temporal cavity solitons

Temporal cavity solitons (TCSs) are optical pulses that persist inside coherently driven passive Kerr resonators [1]. Since their discovery, TCSs have been suggested as bits for all-optical buffers due to their flexibility [2]: they can be individually addressed, erased and moved around at will. To that end, a reliable method is required to move, position, and trap TCSs to precise locations. So far a successful method to achieve this has been to use a phase modulation of the driving field in space [3] or time [4]. Here, we demonstrate that TCS trapping and manipulation can also be achieved by inducing intensity gradients on the background field.