Optical phase-locked loop with fibre lasers for low phase noise millimetre-wave signal generation

Abstract

An optical phase-locked loop (OPLL) using two continuous-wave commercial fibre lasers was implemented by means of pump power modulation. Although the 3 dB bandwidth of the frequency modulation transfer function of a fibre laser was measured to be approximately 6 kHz, the control bandwidth of the loop was extended by a factor of 10 using electronic phase-lead compensation. The operation of our OPLL was stable with a residual RMS phase fluctuation of 57 mrad. By using this technique, the photonic generation of millimetre-wave signals up to 64 GHz was successfully demonstrated.