Theoretical and experimental investigation of broadband cascaded four-wave mixing in high-Q microspheres

We analyze the process of cascaded four-wave mixing in a high-Q microcavity and show that under conditions of suitable cavity-mode dispersion, broadband frequency combs can be generated. We experimentally demonstrate broadband, cascaded four-wave mixing parametric oscillation in the anomalous group-velocity dispersion regime of a high-Q silica microsphere with an overall bandwidth greater than 200 nm.