Optical Generation of Stable Microwave Signal Using a Dual-Wavelength Brillouin Fiber Laser

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a simple scheme to generate highly stable microwave signal by utilizing a dual-wavelength Brillouin fiber laser (DBFL). The DBFL is pumped by a single-frequency distributed-feedback semiconductor laser, and two different kinds of fibers are inserted in the cavity. The frequency of the generated microwave signal is equivalent to the difference between the Brillouin Stokes shifts in the two fibers. Without using any frequency-stabilized mechanism on the light source, the generated microwave signals exhibit high stability both for the injected pump wavelength variation and the environmental temperature fluctuation.