Optical amplification and pulse interleaving for low noise photonics microwave generation

Published

March 12, 2014

Author(s)

Franklyn J. Quinlan, Frederick N. Baynes, Tara M. Fortier, Qiugui Zhou, Allen Cross, Joe Campbelll, Scott A. Diddams

Abstract

We investigate the impact of pulse interleaving and optical amplification on the spectral purity of microwave signals generated by photodetecting the pulsed output of an Er:fiber-based optical frequency comb. It is shown that the microwave phase noise floor can be extremely sensitive to delay length errors in the interleaver, and the contribution of the quantum noise from optical amplification to the phase noise can be reduced ~10 dB for short pulse detection. We exploit optical amplification, in conjunction with high power handling modified uni-traveling carrier photodetectors, to generate a phase noise floor on a 10 GHz carrier of -175 dBc/Hz, the lowest ever demonstrated in the photodetection of a mode-locked fiber laser. At all offset frequencies, the 10 GHz phase noise performance is comparable to or better than the lowest phase noise results yet demonstrated with frequency-stabilized Ti:sapphire frequency combs.

Citation

Optics Letters

Volume

39

Issue

6

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

microwave photonics, mode-locked lasers, optical amplification, phase noise

Citation

Quinlan, F. , Baynes, F. , Fortier, T. , Zhou, Q. , Cross, A. , Campbelll, J. and Diddams, S. (2014), Optical amplification and pulse interleaving for low noise photonics microwave generation, Optics Letters, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=915084 (Accessed October 8, 2025)