Abstract
Optical frequency synthesizers have widespread applications in optical spectroscopy, frequency metrology, and many other fields. However, their applicability is currently limited by size, cost, and power consumption. Silicon photonics technology, which is compatible with complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor fabrication processes, provides a low-cost, compact size, lightweight, and low-power-consumption solution. In this work, we demonstrate an optical frequency synthesizer using a fully integrated silicon-based tunable laser. The synthesizer can be self-calibrated by tuning the repetition rate of the internal mode-locked laser. A 20 nm tuning range from 1544 to 1564 nm is achieved with ~10−13 frequency instability at 10 s averaging time. Its flexibility and fast reconfigurability are also demonstrated by fine tuning the synthesizer and generating arbitrary specified patterns over time-frequency coordinates. This work promotes the frequency stability of silicon-based integrated tunable lasers and paves the way toward chip-scale low-cost optical frequency synthesizers.
Highlights
In the past two decades, there has been much research and development in optical frequency synthesizers (OFSs), which are able to generate accurate and stable optical frequencies from a single microwave frequency reference
OFSs have enabled a wide range of applications in frequency metrology[1,2,3], precise navigation[4,5,6], optical spectroscopy[7,8,9], microwave photonics[10,11,12], and so on
It consists of an integrated erbium TL29 and a mode-locked laser (MLL)
Summary
In the past two decades, there has been much research and development in optical frequency synthesizers (OFSs), which are able to generate accurate and stable optical frequencies from a single microwave frequency reference. OFSs have enabled a wide range of applications in frequency metrology[1,2,3], precise navigation[4,5,6], optical spectroscopy[7,8,9], microwave photonics[10,11,12], and so on. Among different kinds of integrated photonics platforms, silicon photonics technology has been extensively developed to meet the increasing demand for data communication bandwidth. Since it is compatible with the mature complementarymetal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication technology, this technology can cost-effectively mass-produce chip-scale devices on the wafer level. Silicon photonics is a promising candidate to radically reduce the volume and cost of OFSs and eventually bring all the benefits of OFSs from the laboratory to our daily lives
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