Hybrid Fiber-Optic Radio Frequency and Optical Frequency Dissemination With a Single Optical Actuator and Dual-Optical Phase Stabilization

Abstract

In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a technique for simultaneous dissemination of optical and radio frequencies (RF) over an optical-fiber link with a single optical actuator and dual-optical phase stabilization. The optical actuator, namely electro-optic modulator (EOM), can simultaneously be served with a coupler and a dual optical frequency shifter to couple an RF frequency and an optical frequency and to efficiently suppress the phase noise of the two optical frequencies introduced by the fiber link with dual-optical phase stabilization, respectively. We experimentally demonstrate 193 THz optical carrier dissemination with a stability of $1.2\times 10^{-15}$ at the integration time of 1 s and $3.5\times 10^{-17}$ at 10,000 s, and 0.9 GHz RF frequency dissemination with a stability of $5.7\times 10^{-13}$ at 1 s and $5.2\times 10^{-16}$ at 10,000 s over a 30 km optical fiber link in a single telecommunication channel. This proof-of-principle experiment is particularly useful for users who need both RF and optical frequencies simultaneously, but do not have cumbersome and expensive optical combs, and also provides a promising solution towards a robust and flexible ultrastable optical frequency network for multi-user dissemination based on a frequency division multiplexing technique.