English

Fiber Link Stabilization with a Multicore Fiber Amplifier

Optics 2026-02-26 v1

Abstract

We study the use of separate cores of a multicore erbium-doped fiber amplifier (MC-EDFA) in a noise-canceled link for ultrastable optical frequency transfer. We demonstrate fractional frequency instability of 5×10195\times10^{-19} at 1000 s averaging time for the stabilized MC-EDFA alone and 1.4×10181.4\times10^{-18} at 1000 s averaging time when integrated with a 40 km-long 7-core spooled fiber. This study further establishes multicore fiber (MCF) networks as a promising platform for ultrastable frequency transfer, serving as an important step toward incorporating precision time and frequency distribution into future MCF communication infrastructures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.21373,
  title  = {Fiber Link Stabilization with a Multicore Fiber Amplifier},
  author = {Yifan Liu and Takuma Nakamura and Daniel J. Elson and Yuta Wakayama and Charles A. McLemore and Tetsuya Hayashi and Mikael Mazur and Nicolas Fontaine and Franklyn Quinlan and Nazanin Hoghooghi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.21373},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:50:45.184Z