Microresonators offer a simpler approach to sensing with light pulses

Ultrashort optical pulses are becoming increasingly relevant in a number of applications, including distance measurement, molecular fingerprinting and ultrafast sampling. Many of these applications rely not only on a single stream of pulses--also known as "optical frequency combs"--but require two or even three of them. Nonetheless, these multi-comb approaches significantly speed up acquisition time over conventional techniques.