Effects of a quiet point on a Kerr microresonator frequency comb

A quiet point, an operating point of pump-resonance detuning that minimizes frequency fluctuation due to nonlinear effects inside a resonator, has been employed for phase noise reduction of a soliton Kerr microresonator frequency comb (microcomb). Naturally, it is expected that the use of the point will also improve performances of a microcomb in terms of frequency stability and faithfulness in a phase locked loop. In this study, we experimentally investigate the effect in a microcomb with a repetition frequency of 300~GHz. We obtain a lowest fractional frequency instability at a quiet point of $1.5\times 10^{-9}$ at 1 second, which is 44 times lower than free-running instability. Phase-locking of a microcomb to a stabilized fiber comb is demonstrated to evaluate performance in a feedback loop, where in-loop-limited relative fractional frequency instability between the microcomb and the fiber comb of $6.8 \times 10^{-13}$ is obtained as an indicator of the stability limitation.