Optical frequency comb generation from a monolithic microresonator
| Autor: | Del Haye, P., Schliesser, A., Arcizet, O., Wilkins, T., Holzwarth, R., Kippenberg, T. J. |
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| Rok vydání: | 2007 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Nature 450, 1214-1217, 2007 |
| Druh dokumentu: | Working Paper |
| DOI: | 10.1038/nature06401 |
| Popis: | Optical frequency combs provide equidistant frequency markers in the infrared, visible and ultra-violet and can link an unknown optical frequency to a radio or microwave frequency reference. Since their inception frequency combs have triggered major advances in optical frequency metrology and precision measurements and in applications such as broadband laser-based gas sensing8 and molecular fingerprinting. Early work generated frequency combs by intra-cavity phase modulation while to date frequency combs are generated utilizing the comb-like mode structure of mode-locked lasers, whose repetition rate and carrier envelope phase can be stabilized. Here, we report an entirely novel approach in which equally spaced frequency markers are generated from a continuous wave (CW) pump laser of a known frequency interacting with the modes of a monolithic high-Q microresonator13 via the Kerr nonlinearity. The intrinsically broadband nature of parametric gain enables the generation of discrete comb modes over a 500 nm wide span (ca. 70 THz) around 1550 nm without relying on any external spectral broadening. Optical-heterodyne-based measurements reveal that cascaded parametric interactions give rise to an optical frequency comb, overcoming passive cavity dispersion. The uniformity of the mode spacing has been verified to within a relative experimental precision of 7.3*10(-18). Comment: Manuscript and Supplementary Information |
| Databáze: | arXiv |
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