Optoelectronic parametric oscillator

Autor: Wei Li, Qizhuang Cen, Yitang Dai, Shanhong Guan, Tengfei Hao, Ming Li, Ninghua Zhu
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: Light: Science & Applications, Vol 9, Iss 1, Pp 1-10 (2020)
Light, Science & Applications
ISSN: 2047-7538
Popis: Oscillators are one of the key elements in various applications as a signal source to generate periodic oscillations. Among them, an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) is a driven harmonic oscillator based on parametric frequency conversion in an optical cavity, which has been widely investigated as a coherent light source with an extremely wide wavelength tuning range. However, steady oscillation in an OPO is confined by the cavity delay, which leads to difficulty in frequency tuning, and the frequency tuning is discrete with the minimum tuning step determined by the cavity delay. Here, we propose and demonstrate a counterpart of an OPO in the optoelectronic domain, i.e., an optoelectronic parametric oscillator (OEPO) based on parametric frequency conversion in an optoelectronic cavity to generate microwave signals. Owing to the unique energy-transition process in the optoelectronic cavity, the phase evolution in the OEPO is not linear, leading to steady single-mode oscillation or multimode oscillation that is not bounded by the cavity delay. Furthermore, the multimode oscillation in the OEPO is stable and easy to realize owing to the phase control of the parametric frequency-conversion process in the optoelectronic cavity, while stable multimode oscillation is difficult to achieve in conventional oscillators such as an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) or an OPO due to the mode-hopping and mode-competition effect. The proposed OEPO has great potential in applications such as microwave signal generation, oscillator-based computation, and radio-frequency phase-stable transfer.
A new oscillator featuring phase-controlled oscillation Parametric oscillators are driven harmonic oscillators that widely used in various areas of applications. In the past, parametric oscillators have been designed in the pure optical domain or the electrical domain, which are both delay-controlled oscillators with a steady oscillation confined by the cavity delay. Ming Li from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and his colleagues have now developed a brand-new parametric oscillator in the microwave photonics domain, i.e., a hybrid optical-electrical oscillator. Owing to the unique parametric process in the optoelectronics cavity, the oscillation in the optoelectronic parametric oscillator is a phase-controlled operation, leading to a steady oscillation that is not bounded by the cavity delay. Continuously tuneable single frequency oscillation and stable multimode oscillation are produced by the new optoelectronic parametric oscillator, which are hard or even impossible to achieve in traditional delay-controlled oscillators.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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