Nonlinear wave–matter interactions may give rise to solitons, phenomena that feature inherent stability in wave propagation and unusual spectral characteristics. Solitons have been created in a variety of physical systems and have had important roles in a broad range of applications, including communications, spectroscopy and metrology^1,2,3,4. In recent years, the realization of dissipative Kerr optical solitons in microcavities has led to the generation of frequency combs in a chip-scale platform^5,6,7,8,9,10. Within a cavity, photons can interact with mechanical modes. Cavity optomechanics has found applications for frequency conversion, such as microwave-to-optical or radio-frequency-to-optical^11,12,13, of interest for communications and interfacing quantum systems operating at different frequencies. Here we report the observation of mechanical micro-solitons excited by optical fields in an optomechanical microresonator, expanding soliton generation in optical resonators to a different spectral window. The optical field circulating along the circumference of a whispering gallery mode resonator triggers a mechanical nonlinearity through optomechanical coupling, which in turn induces a time-varying periodic modulation on the propagating mechanical mode, leading to a tailored modal dispersion. Stable localized mechanical wave packets—mechanical solitons—can be realized when the mechanical loss is compensated by phonon gain and the optomechanical nonlinearity is balanced by the tailored modal dispersion. The realization of mechanical micro-solitons driven by light opens up new avenues for optomechanical technologies¹⁴ and may find applications in acoustic sensing, information processing, energy storage, communications and surface acoustic wave technology.

非线性波-物质相互作用可能会产生孤子，这种现象具有波传播的固有稳定性和不寻常的光谱特性。孤子已在各种物理系统中产生，并在广泛的应用中发挥了重要作用，包括通信、光谱学和计量学^1,2,3,4。近年来，耗散克尔光孤子在微腔中的实现导致了芯片级平台^5,6,7,8,9,10频率梳的产生。在空腔内，光子可以与机械模式相互作用。腔光机械已经找到了频率转换的应用，例如微波到光学或射频到光学^11,12,13，对于以不同频率运行的通信和接口量子系统很感兴趣。在这里，我们报告了对光机械微谐振器中光场激发的机械微孤子的观察，将光学谐振器中的孤子生成扩展到不同的光谱窗口。沿着回音壁模式谐振器的圆周循环的光场通过光机耦合触发机械非线性，这反过来在传播的机械模式上引起时变周期性调制，从而导致定制的模式色散。当机械损失由声子增益补偿并且光机械非线性由定制模态色散平衡时，可以实现稳定的局部机械波包——机械孤子。¹⁴并可能在声学传感、信息处理、能量存储、通信和表面声波技术中找到应用。