Sub-THz continuous wave generation scheme using high-order harmonics modulated lightwave

Abstract

We propose a sub-THz continuous wave (CW) generation scheme using a high-order harmonics modulated lightwave (HML) to reduce an electronic dependency of a conventional double sideband suppressed carrier (DSB-SC) scheme. The electronic dependency should be overcome to increase frequency tunability of the conventional DSB-SC scheme. This is because the frequency of a local oscillator (LO), fLO, should be one-half frequency of the frequency of a desired sub-THz CW in the conventional DSB-SC scheme. The proposed scheme is formed by adding an optical feedback loop to the conventional DSB-SC scheme. In order to verify our proposed scheme, a 120GHz CW is generated using the LO with fLO=20GHz. Based on our experimental results, we have found that the frequency of the LO can be reduced by our proposed scheme up to one-sixth (20GHz) of 120GHz. The 120GHz CW generated by the proposed scheme has 52dB higher photomixed output power with narrow spectral linewidth than that of the 120GHz CW generated by the conventional DSB-SC scheme using the LO with fLO=20GHz. Consequently, our proposed scheme can be helpful to reduce the electronic dependency of the conventional DSB-SC scheme.