Self-stabilization of an optical frequency comb using a short-path-length interferometer
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Cahill, James P., Weimin Zhou, and Curtis R. Menyuk. “Self-Stabilization of an Optical Frequency Comb Using a Short-Path-Length Interferometer.” Optics Letters 42, no. 9 (May 1, 2017): 1680–83. https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.42.001680.
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This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
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Abstract
We stabilized the repetition rate of an optical frequency comb using a self-referenced phase-locked loop. The phase-locked loop generated its error signal with a fiber-optic delay-line interferometer that had a path-length difference of 8 m. We used the stabilized repetition rate to generate a 10 GHz signal with a single-sideband phase noise that was limited by environmental noise to -120 dBc / Hz at an offset frequency of 1 kHz. Modeling results indicate that thermoconductive noise sets a fundamental phase noise limit for an 8 m interferometer of -152 dBc / Hz at a 1 kHz offset frequency. The short length of the interferometer indicates that it could be realized as a photonic integrated circuit, which may lead to a chip-scale stabilized optical frequency comb with an ultralow-phase-noise repetition rate.