Testing ultrafast mode-locking at microhertz relative optical linewidth
Michael J. Martin, Seth M. Foreman, T. R. Schibli, Jun Ye
备注：
Expanded discussion to include correlated noise terms, made minor formatting changes, added a reference, and fixed typographical errors. 10 pages, 5 figures
We report new limits on the phase coherence of the ultrafast mode-locking process in an octave-spanning Ti:sapphire comb. We find that the mode-locking mechanism correlates optical phase across a full optical octave with less than 2.5 micro Hz relative linewidth. This result is at least two orders of magnitude below recent predictions for quantum-limited individual comb-mode linewidths, verifying that the mode-locking mechanism strongly correlates quantum noise across the comb spectrum.
We report in detail the design process and performance of an auto-locking ultra-stable laser with sub-hertz linewidth at the first time. The laser frequency is automatically stabilized to an optical reference cavity with a home-made controller, which is based on a combination of digital circuit and analog circuit. The digital circuit is used for diagnosing and manipulating the state of the ultra-stable laser, and the analog circuit is used for demodulating the discriminate signal and servo control. A method of searching the transmission signal in the closed-loop state instead of the open-loop …
We experimentally observed self-injection locking regime of the gain-switched laser to high-Q optical microresonator. We revealed that comb generated by the gain-switched laser experiences a dramatic reduce of comb teeth linewidths in this regime. We demonstrated the Lorentzian linewidth of the comb teeth of sub-kHz scale as narrow as for non-switched self-injection locked laser. Such setup allows generation of high-contrast electrically-tunable optical frequency combs with tunable comb line spacing in a wide range from 10 kHz up to 10 GHz. The characteristics of the generated combs were studi…
We stabilize the idler frequency of a singly-resonant optical parametric oscillator directly to the resonance of a mid-infrared Fabry-Pérot reference cavity. This is accomplished by the Pound-Drever-Hall locking scheme, controlling either the pump laser or the resonant signal frequency. A residual relative frequency noise power spectral density below 10$^3$ Hz$^2$/Hz is reached, with a Gaussian linewidth of 920 Hz over 100 ms, which demonstrates the potential for reaching spectral purity down to the Hz level by locking the optical parametric oscillator against a mid-infrared cavity with state-…
We have demonstrated the laser frequency offset locking via the Rb tripod-type double dark resonances electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) system. The influence of coupling fields power and detuning on the tripod-type EIT profile is detailed studied. In a wide coupling fields detuning range, the narrower EIT dip has an ultranarrow linewidth of 590 KHz, which is about one order narrower than the natural linewidth of Rb. Without the additional frequency stabilization of the coupling lasers, we achieve the relative frequency fluctuation of 60 KHz in a long time of ~2000s, which is narro…
We experimentally demonstrate thermo-optic locking of a semiconductor laser to an integrated toroidal optical microresonator. The lock is maintained for time periods exceeding twelve hours, without requiring any electronic control systems. Fast control is achieved by optical feedback induced by scattering centers within the microresonator, with thermal locking due to optical heating maintaining constructive interference between the cavity and the laser. Furthermore, the optical feedback acts to narrow the laser linewidth, with ultra high quality microtoroid resonances offering the potential fo…
We report on the phase-locking of two diode lasers based on self-seeded tapered amplifiers. In these lasers, a reduction of linewidth is achieved using narrow-band high-transmission interference filters for frequency selection. The lasers combine a compact design with a Lorentzian linewidth below 200 kHz at an output power of 300 mW. We characterize the phase noise of the phase-locked laser system and study its potential for coherent beam-splitting in atom interferometers.
Self-injection locking of a diode laser to a high-quality-factor microresonator is widely used for frequency stabilization and linewidth narrowing. We constructed several microresonator-based laser sources with measured instantaneous linewidths of 1 Hz and used them for investigation and implementation of the self-injection locking effect. We studied analytically and experimentally the dependence of the stabilization coefficient on tunable parameters such as locking phase and coupling rate. It was shown that precise control of the locking phase allows fine tuning of the generated frequency fro…
A mode locked fibre laser as a source of ultra-stable pulse train has revolutionised a wide range of fundamental and applied research areas by offering high peak powers, high repetition rates, femtosecond range pulse widths and a narrow linewidth. However, further progress in linewidth narrowing seems to be limited by the complexity of the carrier-envelope phase control. Here for the first time we demonstrate experimentally and theoretically a new mechanism of resonance vector self-mode locking where tuning in-cavity birefringence leads to excitation of the longitudinal modes sidebands accompa…
We report on a narrow linewidth laser diode system that is stabilized using both optical and electronic feedback to a spectral hole in cryogenic Tm:YAG. The laser system exhibits very low phase noise. The spectrum of the beat signal between two lasers, over millisecond timescales, is either Fourier limited or limited by the -111dBc/Hz noise floor. The resulting laser is well suited to quantum optics and sensing applications involving rare earth ion dopants.
We built a 1-watt cw singly resonant optical parametric oscillator operating at an idler wavelength of 1.65~$μ$m for application to quantum interfaces. The non resonant idler is frequency stabilized by side-fringe locking on a relatively high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity, and the influence of intensity noise is carefully analyzed. A relative linewidth down to the sub-kHz level (about 30 Hz over 2 s) is achieved. A very good long term stability is obtained for both frequency and intensity.
Two cw single-mode violet (397nm) diode lasers are locked to a single external-cavity master diode laser by optical injection locking. A double-pass 1.6GHz acousto-optic modulator is used to provide a 3.2GHz offset frequency between the two slave lasers. We achieve up to 20mW usable output in each slave beam, with as little as 25 μW of injection power at room temperature. An optical heterodyne measurement of the beat note between the two slave beams gives a linewidth of <=10Hz at 3.2GHz. We also estimate the free-running linewidth of the master laser to be approximately 3MHz, by optical hetero…
Diode laser self-injection locking (SIL) to a whispering gallery mode of a high quality factor resonator is a widely used method for laser linewidth narrowing and high-frequency noise suppression. SIL has already been used for the demonstration of ultra-low-noise photonic microwave oscillators and soliton microcomb generation and has a wide range of possible applications. Up to date, SIL was demonstrated only with a single laser. However, multi-frequency and narrow-linewidth laser sources are in high demand for modern telecommunication systems, quantum technologies, and microwave photonics. He…
The influence of nonlinear properties of semiconductor saturable absorbers on ultrashort pulse generation was investigated. It was shown, that linewidth enhancement, quadratic and linear ac Stark effect contribute essentially to the mode locking in cw solid-state lasers, that can increase the pulse stability, decrease pulse duration and reduce the mode locking threshold
In this letter, we derive a fully-stabilized narrow-linewidth optical frequency comb (OFC) reference to a kilometer-long fiber delay line for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. The 1537-nm comb modes and 1566-nm comb modes in the OFC are phase-locked to the fiber delay line with 40-kHz locking bandwidth. From out-of-loop measurement, the 1542-nm comb mode has residual phase noise of 925 mrad (integrated from 10 MHz to 1 kHz), fractional frequency stability of 9.13*10(-13) at 12.8 ms average time and 580 Hz linewidth. The linewidth has been compressed by a factor of ~ 170 compared to…
Semiconductor mode-locked lasers can be used in a variety of applications ranging from multi-carrier sources for WDM communication systems to time base references for metrology. Their packaging in compact chip- or module-level systems remains however burdened by their strong sensitivity to back-reflections, quickly destroying the coherence of the mode-locking. Here, we investigate the stabilization of mode-locked lasers directly edge coupled to a silicon photonic integrated circuit, with the objective of moving isolators downstream to the output of the photonic circuit. A 2.77 kHz 3 dB RF line…
We demonstrate a combination of optical and electronic feedback that significantly narrows the linewidth of distributed Bragg reflector lasers (DBRs). We use optical feedback from a long external fiber path to reduce the high-frequency noise of the laser. An electro-optic modulator placed inside the optical feedback path allows us to apply electronic feedback to the laser frequency with very large bandwidth, enabling robust and stable locking to a reference cavity that suppresses low-frequency components of laser noise. The combination of optical and electronic feedback allows us to significan…
Self-injection locking to a high-quality-factor microresonator is a key component of various up-to-date photonic applications, including compact narrow-linewidth lasers and microcomb sources. For optimal construction of such devices it is necessary to know the parameters of the locking mode, which is a challenging task. We developed and verified experimentally an original technique based on the fundamentals of the self-injection locking effect, which allows determining the key parameters of the mode of the microresonator (quality factor, vertical index) as well as laser diode parameters. We de…
Dissipative Kerr soliton (DKS) frequency combs - also known as microcombs - have arguably created a new field in cavity nonlinear photonics, with a strong cross-fertilization between theoretical, experimental, and technological research. Spatiotemporal mode-locking (STML) not only add new degrees of freedom to ultrafast laser technology, but also provide new insights for implementing analogue computers and heuristic optimizers with photonics. Here, we combine the principles of DKS and STML for the first time to demonstrate the STML DKS by developing an unexplored ultrahigh-quality-factor Fabry…
The plane-wave dynamics of 3*omega => (2*omega, omega) subharmonic optical parametric oscillators containing a second harmonic generator of the idler wave omega is analyzed analytically by using the meanfield approximation and numerically by taking into account the field propagation inside the media. The resonant Chi(2):Chi(2) cascaded second-order nonlinearities induce a mutual injection-locking of the signal and idler waves that leads to coherent self phase-locking of the pump and subharmonic waves, freezing the phase diffusion noise. In case of signal-and-idler resonant devices, largely det…
Chip-Scale, Sub-Hz Fundamental Sub-kHz Integral Linewidth 780 nm Laser through Self-Injection-Locking a Fabry-Pérot laser to an Ultra-High Q Integrated Resonator
We discuss our recent progress in iimproving the phase noise of a semiconductor laser using self-injection locking of to a mode of a high-Q whispering gallery mode resonator. Locking efficiency is analyzed for semiconductor distributed feedback (DFB) as well as Fabry-Perot (FP) lasers operating at 690nm, 1060nm, 1550nm, and 2000nm. Instantaneous linewidth below 300 Hz is realized with telecom DFB lasers. Tunability of the lasers is demonstrated. Commercially available packaged "plug-and-play" devices are manufactured.
We report a multi-channel optical frequency synthesizer developed to generate extremely stable continuous wave lasers directly out of the optical comb of an Er-doped fiber oscillator. Being stabilized to a high-finesse cavity with a fractional frequency stability of $3.8\times10^{-15}$ at 0.1 s, the comb-rooted synthesizer produces multiple optical frequencies of ultra-narrow linewidth of 1.0 Hz at 1 s concurrently with an output power of tens of mW per each channel. Diode-based stimulated emission by injection locking is a key mechanism that allows comb frequency modes to sprout up with suffi…
We report the frequency stabilization of an erbium-doped fiber distributed-feedback laser using an all-fiber based Michelson interferometer of large arm imbalance. The interferometer uses a 1 km SMF-28 optical fiber spool and an acousto optic modulator allowing heterodyne detection. The frequency noise power spectral density is reduced by more than 40 dB for Fourier frequencies ranging from 1 Hz to 10 kHz, corresponding to a level well below 1 Hz^2/Hz over the whole range. It reaches 10^{-2} Hz^2/Hz at 1 kHz. Between 40 Hz and 30 kHz, the frequency noise is shown to be comparable to the one ob…
An experimental method is developed for the robust frequency stabilization using a high-finesse cavity when the laser exhibits large intermittent frequency jumps. This is accomplished by applying an additional slow feedback signal from Doppler-free fluorescence spectroscopy in an atomic beam with increased frequency locking range. As a result, a stable and narrow-linewidth 556 nm laser maintains the frequency lock status for more than a week, and contributes to more accurate evaluation of the Yb optical lattice clock. In addition, the reference optical cavity is supported at vibration-insensit…
Laser injection locking and nanophotonic spectral translation of electro-optic frequency combs
National Institute of Standards and Technology（美国国家标准与技术研究院）；University of Maryland（马里兰大学）；Joint Quantum Institute, NIST/University of Maryland（NIST/马里兰大学联合量子研究所）
We report on the injection locking of an optically levitated nanomechanical oscillator (a silica nanosphere) to resonant intensity modulations of an external optical signal. We explore the characteristic features of injection locking in this system, e.g. the phase pull-in effect and the injection-induced reduction of the oscillation linewidth. Our measurements are in good agreement with theoretical predictions and deepen the analogy of injection locking in levitated optomechanical systems to that in optical systems (lasers). By measuring the force noise of our feedback cooled free-running osci…
Highly coherent optical sources are a key element in several fields of physics, in particular in time frequency metrology. Over the past decennia, there has been particular efforts in developing such sources to the expense of sophisticated laser systems and relatively smart electronics. We propose here a new general principle of a self-adaptive oscillator where the intricate operation of a 100-m-long active optical resonator and a standard semiconductor laser offers a very high spectral purity and can be tailored to any wavelength. Single frequency operation of this self-adaptive photonic osci…
We present a novel technique to phase-lock two lasers with controllable frequency difference. In our setup, one sideband of a current modulated Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSEL) is phase locked to the master laser by injection seeding, while another sideband of the VCSEL is used to phase lock the slave laser. The slave laser is therefore locked in phase with the master laser, with a frequency difference tunable up to about 35 GHz. The sideband suppression rate of the slave laser is more than 30dB at 30 uW seed power. The heterodyne spectrum between master and slave has a linewidth…
We demonstrate a technique to lock simultaneously two laser frequencies to each step of a two-photon transition in the presence of a magnetic field sufficiently large to gain access to the hyperfine Paschen-Back regime. A ladder configuration with the 5S$_{1/2}$, 5P$_{3/2}$ and 5D$_{5/2}$ terms in a thermal vapour of $^{87}$Rb atoms is used. The two lasers remain locked for more than 24 hours. For the sum of the laser frequencies, which represents the stability of the two-photon lock, we measure a frequency instability of less than the Rb D$_2$ natural linewidth of 6 MHz for nearly all measure…
The recent demonstration of a terahertz (THz) molecular gas laser pumped by a mid-infrared quantum cascade laser (QCL) has opened up new perspectives for this family of sources, traditionally relying on CO2-laser pumping. A so far open question concerning QCL-pumped THz molecular lasers (MLs) is related to their spectral purity. Indeed, assessing their frequency/phase noise is crucial for a number of applications potentially exploiting these sources as local oscillators. Here this question is addressed by reporting the measurement of the frequency noise power spectral density (PSD) of a THz ML…
We herein report a simultaneous frequency stabilization of two 780-nm external cavity diode lasers using a precision wavelength meter (WLM). The laser lock performance is characterized by the Allan deviation measurement in which we find $σ_{y}=10^{-12}$ at an averaging time of 1000 s. We also obtain spectral profiles through a heterodyne spectroscopy, identifying the contribution of white and flicker noises to the laser linewidth. The frequency drift of the WLM is measured to be about 2.0(4) MHz over 36 hours. Utilizing the two lasers as a cooling and repumping field, we demonstrate a magneto-…
We report on an ultralow noise optical frequency transfer from a remotely located Sr optical lattice clock laser to a Ti:Sapphire optical frequency comb through telecom-wavelength optical fiber networks. The inherent narrow linewidth of the Ti:Sapphire optical frequency comb eliminates the need for a local reference high-finesse cavity. The relative fractional frequency instability of the optical frequency comb with respect to the remote optical reference was $6.7(1) \times 10^{-18}$ at 1 s and $1.05(3) \times 10^{-19}$ at 1,000 s including a 2.9 km-long fiber network. This ensured the optical…
Portable mid-infrared (mid-IR) spectroscopy and sensing applications require widely tunable, narrow linewidth, chip-scale, single-mode sources without sacrificing significant output power. However, no such lasers have been demonstrated beyond 3 $μ$m due to the challenge of building tunable, high quality-factor (Q) on-chip cavities. We demonstrate a tunable, single-mode mid-IR laser at 3.4 $μ$m using a high-Q silicon microring cavity with integrated heaters and a multi-mode Interband Cascade Laser (ICL). We show that the multiple longitudinal modes of an ICL collapse into a single frequency via…
Ultrashort pulsed lasers, operating through the phenomenon of mode-locking, have played a significant role in many facets of our society for 50 years, for example in the way we exchange information, measure and diagnose diseases, process materials and in many other applications. The ability to phase-lock the modes of the high-quality resonators recently exploited to demonstrate optical combs, would allow mode-locked lasers to benefit from their high optical spectral quality in order to realize novel sources such as precision optical clocks for applications to metrology, telecommunications, mic…
We describe a compact waveguide amplifier system that is suitable for optically pumping rubidium magnetometers. The system consists of an auto-locking vacuum-sealed external cavity diode laser, a semiconductor tapered amplifier and a pulsing unit based on an acousto-optic modulator. The diode laser utilises optical feedback from an interference filter to narrow the linewidth of an inexpensive laser diode to ~500 kHz. This output is scannable over an 8 GHz range (at 780 nm) and can be locked without human intervention to any spectral marker in an expandable library of reference spectra, using t…
A Robust Hertz-Linewidth Quantum-Dot Coherent Swept Source with Adaptive Self-Linearization
State Key Laboratory for Extreme Photonics and Instrumentation, Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Information Technology, College of Optical Science and Engineering, International Research Center for Advanced Photonics, Zhejiang University（浙江大学）；State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University（中山大学）；China Jiliang University（中国计量大学）；Intelligent Optics and Photonics Research Center, Jiaxing Research Institute, Zhejiang University（浙江大学嘉兴研究院）
We present a flexible all-polarization-maintaining (PM) mode-locked ytterbium (Yb):fiber laser based on a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror (NALM). In addition to providing detailed design considerations, we discuss the different operation regimes accessible by this versatile laser architecture and experimentally analyze five representative mode-locking states. These five states were obtained in a 78-MHz configuration at different intracavity group delay dispersion (GDD) values ranging from anomalous (-0.035 ps$^2$) to normal (+0.015 ps$^2$). We put a particular focus on the characterization of…
Recent advances in the processing of thin-film LNOI have enabled low-loss photonic integrated circuits, modulators with improved half-wave voltage, electro-optic frequency combs and novel on-chip electro-optic devices, with applications ranging from 5G telecommunication and microwave photonics to microwave-to-optical quantum interfaces. Lithium niobate integrated photonic circuits could equally be the basis of integrated narrow-linewidth frequency-agile lasers. Pioneering work on polished lithium niobate crystal resonators has led to the development of electrically tunable narrow-linewidth las…
Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bonn（波恩大学物理研究所）；Research Unit Satellite Geodesy, Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑工业大学卫星大地测量研究部）；School of Physical Sciences, University of Canterbury（坎特伯雷大学物理科学学院）
Four-wave mixing (FWM) is an important nonlinear optical phenomenon that underlines many of the discoveries and device applications since the laser was invented. Examples include parametric amplification, mode-locked pulses and frequency combs, and in the quantum optics regime, entangled-photon generation, squeezed-state production and optical transduction from the visible to infrared wavelengths. For quantum dot systems, the basic understanding of FWM is limited by the conventional investigation method, which concentrates on the FWM susceptibility measured with optical amplifiers. This paper …
Dual comb spectroscopy (DCS) is a broadband technique offering high resolution and fast data acquisition. We describe a hybrid dual comb spectrometer comprising a broadband commercial fiber laser system offering a wide range of sample interrogation, and an actively mode locked semiconductor laser (MLL) having a widely tunable, relatively narrow spectrum. The mutual coherence over 100 seconds has been realized between the two combs. We employed the DCS system to characterize the absorption spectrum of rubidium atoms at 313 K with a high signal to noise ratio. The broadband laser is directly loc…
