Optical frequency synthesis and measurement using fibre-based femtosecond lasers

We report the synthesis and measurement of an ultra-precise and extremely stable optical frequency in the telecommunications window around 1543 nm. Using a fibre-based femtosecond frequency comb we have phase-stabilised a fibre laser at 194 THz to an optical frequency standard at 344 THz, thus transferring the properties of the optical frequency standard to another spectral region. Relative to the optical frequency standard, the synthesised frequency at 194 THz is determined to within 1 mHz and its fractional frequency instability is measured to be less than 2*10^{-15} at 1 s, reaching 5*10^{-18} after 8000 s. We also measured the synthesised frequency against a caesium fountain clock: here the frequency comparison itself contributes less than 4 mHz (2*10^{-17}) to the uncertainty. Our results confirm the suitability of fibre based frequency comb technology for precision measurements and frequency synthesis, and enable long-distance comparison of optical clocks by using optical fibres to transmit the frequency information

Spectral Line-by-Line Pulse Shaping of an On-Chip Microresonator Frequency Comb

We report, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, spectral phase characterization and line-by-line pulse shaping of an optical frequency comb generated by nonlinear wave mixing in a microring resonator. Through programmable pulse shaping the comb is compressed into a train of near-transform-limited pulses of \approx 300 fs duration (intensity full width half maximum) at 595 GHz repetition rate. An additional, simple example of optical arbitrary waveform generation is presented. The ability to characterize and then stably compress the frequency comb provides new data on the stability of the spectral phase and suggests that random relative frequency shifts due to uncorrelated variations of frequency dependent phase are at or below the 100 microHertz level.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure

Cavity-enhanced single frequency synthesis via DFG of mode-locked pulse trains

We show how to synthesize a CW, single-frequency optical field from the frequency-dispersed, pulsed field of a mode-locked laser. This process, which relies on difference frequency generation in an optical cavity, is efficient and can be considered as an optical rectification. Quantitative estimates for the output power and amplitude noise properties of a realistic system are given. Possible applications to optical frequency synthesis and optical metrology are envisaged

Ultrafast electrooptic dual-comb interferometry

The femtosecond laser frequency comb has enabled the 21st century revolution in optical synthesis and metrology. A particularly compelling technique that relies on the broadband coherence of two laser frequency combs is dual-comb interferometry. This method is rapidly advancing the field of optical spectroscopy and empowering new applications, from nonlinear microscopy to laser ranging. Up to now, most dual-comb interferometers were based on modelocked lasers, whose repetition rates have restricted the measurement speed to ~ kHz. Here we demonstrate a novel dual-comb interferometer that is based on electrooptic frequency comb technology and measures consecutive complex spectra at a record-high refresh rate of 25 MHz. These results pave the way for novel scientific and metrology applications of frequency comb generators beyond the realm of molecular spectroscopy, where the measurement of ultrabroadband waveforms is of paramount relevance

Comb-based WDM transmission at 10 Tbit/s using a DC-driven quantum-dash mode-locked laser diode

Chip-scale frequency comb generators have the potential to become key building blocks of compact wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) transceivers in future metropolitan or campus-area networks. Among the various comb generator concepts, quantum-dash (QD) mode-locked laser diodes (MLLD) stand out as a particularly promising option, combining small footprint with simple operation by a DC current and offering flat broadband comb spectra. However, the data transmission performance achieved with QD-MLLD was so far limited by strong phase noise of the individual comb tones, restricting experiments to rather simple modulation formats such as quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) or requiring hard-ware-based compensation schemes. Here we demonstrate that these limitations can be over-come by digital symbol-wise phase tracking algorithms, avoiding any hardware-based phase-noise compensation. We demonstrate 16QAM dual-polarization WDM transmission on 38 channels at an aggregate net data rate of 10.68 Tbit/s over 75 km of standard single-mode fiber. To the best of our knowledge, this corresponds to the highest data rate achieved through a DC-driven chip-scale comb generator without any hardware-based phase-noise reduction schemes