No Arabic abstract
We demonstrate two fully and tightly phase locked 750 MHz ytterbium (Yb) fiber frequency combs that are independently stabilized to a continuous wave (CW) laser with <1 rad RMS phase error. A bulk EOM and a single stack PZT are separately utilized as the fast actuators for cavity length stabilization. The carrier envelop frequencies are phase locked by single loop feedback to laser diode current, showing 1.6 MHz servo bumps. The in-loop fractional frequency instabilities are ~1.5e-18 at 1s for both combs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest repetition rate in fiber based low phase noise combs tightly locked to optical frequency reference.
The road towards the realization of quantum cascade laser (QCL) frequency combs (QCL-combs) has undoubtedly attracted ubiquitous attention from the scientific community, as these devices promise to deliver all-in-one (i.e. a single, miniature, active devices) frequency comb (FC) synthesizers in a range as wide as QCL spectral coverage itself (from about 4 microns to the THz range), with the unique possibility to tailor their spectral emission by band structure engineering. For these reasons, vigorous efforts have been spent to characterize the emission of four-wave-mixing multi-frequency devices, aiming to seize their functioning mechanisms. However, up to now, all the reported studies focused on free-running QCL-combs, eluding the fundamental ingredient that turns a FC into a useful metrological tool. For the first time we have combined mode-locked multi-frequency QCL emitters with full phase stabilization and independent control of the two FC degrees of freedom. At the same time, we have introduced the Fourier transform analysis of comb emission (FACE) technique, used for measuring and simultaneously monitoring the Fourier phases of the QCL-comb modes. The demonstration of tailored-emission, miniaturized, electrically-driven, mid-infrared/THz coverage, fully-stabilized and fully-controlled QCL-combs finally enables this technology for metrological-grade applications triggering a new scientific leap affecting several fields ranging from everyday life to frontier-research.
We demonstrate an easy to manufacture, 25 mm long ultra-stable optical reference cavity for transportable photonic microwave generation systems. Employing a rigid holding geometry that is first-order insensitive to the squeezing force and a cavity geometry that improves the thermal noise limit at room temperature, we observe a laser phase noise that is nearly thermal noise limited for three frequency decades (1 Hz to 1 kHz offset) and supports 10 GHz generation with phase noise near -100 dBc/Hz at 1 Hz offset and <-173 dBc/Hz for all offsets >600 Hz. The fractional frequency stability reaches $2times10^{-15}$ at 0.1 s of averaging.
We theoretically and experimentally study the noise of a class-A dual-frequency vertical external cavity surface emitting laser operating at Cesium clock wavelength. The intensity noises of the two orthogonally polarized modes and the phase noise of their beatnote are investigated. The intensity noises of the two modes and their correlations are well predicted by a theory based on coupled rate equations. The phase noise of the beatnote is well described by considering both thermal effects and the effect of phase-amplitude coupling. The good agreement between theory and experiment indicates possible ways to further decrease the laser noises.
We describe the measurement of the secular motion of a levitated nanoparticle in a Paul trap with a CMOS camera. This simple method enables us to reach signal-to-noise ratios as good as 10$^{6}$ with a displacement sensitivity better than 10$^{-16},m^{2}$/Hz. This method can be used to extract trap parameters as well as the properties of the levitated particles. We demonstrate continuous monitoring of the particle dynamics on timescales of the order of weeks. We show that by using the improvement given by super-resolution imaging, a significant reduction in the noise floor can be attained, with an increase in the bandwidth of the force sensitivity. This approach represents a competitive alternative to standard optical detection for a range of low frequency oscillators where low optical powers are required
While it has been shown that backscattering induced phase noise can be suppressed by adopting acoustic-optic-modulators (AOMs) at the local and remote sites to break the frequency symmetry in both directions. However, this issue can not be avoided for conventional fiber-optic multiple-access coherent optical phase dissemination in which the interference of the signal light with the Rayleigh backscattered light will probably destroy the coherence of the stabilized optical signal. We suppress the backscattering effect by locally breaking the frequency symmetry at the extraction point by inserting an additional AOM. Here, we theoretically analyze and experimentally demonstrate an add-drop one more AOM approach for suppressing the Rayleigh backscattering within the fiber link. Near-complete suppression of backscattering noise is experimentally confirmed through the measurement the elimination of a common interference term of the signal light and the Rayleigh backscattered light. The results demonstrate that the Rayleigh backscattering light has a limited effect compared to the residual delay-limited fiber phase noise on the systems performance. Our results also provide new evidence that it is possible to largely suppress Rayleigh and other backscattering noise within a long optical fiber link, where the accumulated phase noise could be large, by using frequency symmetry breaking at each access node to achieve robust multiple-access coherent optical phase propagation in spite of scatters or defects.