High flatness optical frequency comb generator based on the chirping of modulators

Abstract

A novel scheme for generation of an optical frequency comb (OFC) based on the chirping of two cascaded modulators is proposed. The first modulator is a dual-electrode Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM), while the other modulator is an integrated MZM composed of two parallel MZMs that increases the number of comb lines. Our modified scheme can generate a large number of frequency lines with excellent flatness by simply modifying the chirp factor, and it is shown that up to 54 frequency lines could be observed. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that under the variety of conditions that can be used in this scheme, the power fluctuations of the OFC lines are less than 0.5 dB in all cases; these results demonstrate the robustness of our scheme and verify its good accuracy and high stability with perfect flatness. Additionally, our modified scheme has the merit of tunable frequency spacing, which is practical for experimental realization of the OFC.