Reduction of Flicker Phase Noise in High-Speed Photodetectors under Ultrashort Pulse Illumination

Published

April 23, 2021

Author(s)

Dahyeon Lee, Takuma Nakamura, Jizhao Zang, Joe C. Campbell, Scott Diddams, Franklyn Quinlan

Abstract

High-fidelity photodetection enables the transfer of the low noise inherent to optical oscillators to the microwave domain. However, when photodetecting optical signals of the highest timing stability, photodiode flicker (1/f) noise can dominate the resulting timing jitter at timescales longer than 1 ms. With the goal of improving timing fidelity when transferring from the optical to microwave domain, we vary the duty cycle of a train of optical pulses and show that the photodetector flicker phase noise on a photonically generated 1 GHz microwave signal can be reduced by 10 dB under ultrashort pulse illumination. In addition, a strong correlation between amplitude and phase flicker noise is found, implying a single baseband noise source can modulate both quadratures of the microwave carrier. These findings expand the limits of the ultimate timing stability that can be transferred from optics to electronics.

Citation

IEEE Photonics Journal

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/JPHOT.2021.3075381

Local Download

Keywords

1/f noise, Microwave phase noise, Photodiode

Citation

Lee, D. , Nakamura, T. , Zang, J. , Campbell, J. , Diddams, S. and Quinlan, F. (2021), Reduction of Flicker Phase Noise in High-Speed Photodetectors under Ultrashort Pulse Illumination, IEEE Photonics Journal, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/JPHOT.2021.3075381, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=931803 (Accessed October 17, 2025)