Spontaneous symmetry breaking and trapping of temporal Kerr cavity solitons by pulsed or amplitude-modulated driving fields

We report on a systematic study of temporal Kerr cavity soliton dynamics in the presence of pulsed or amplitude-modulated driving fields. In stark contrast to the more extensively studied case of phase modulations, we find that Kerr cavity solitons are not always attracted to maxima or minima of driving field amplitude inhomogeneities. Instead, we find that the solitons are attracted to temporal positions associated with specific driving field values that depend only on the cavity detuning. We describe our findings in light of a spontaneous symmetry breaking instability that physically ensues from a competition between coherent driving and nonlinear propagation effects. In addition to identifying a previously unfamiliar type of Kerr cavity soliton behavior, our results provide valuable insights into practical cavity configurations employing pulsed or amplitude-modulated driving fields.