Photonic chip-based low noise microwave oscillator
Abstract
Numerous modern technologies are reliant on the low-phase noise and exquisite timing stability of microwave signals. Substantial progress has been made in the field of microwave photonics, whereby low noise microwave signals are generated by the down-conversion of ultra-stable optical references using a frequency comb. Such systems, however, are constructed with bulk or fiber optics and are difficult to further reduce in size and power consumption. Our work addresses this challenge by leveraging advances in integrated photonics to demonstrate low-noise microwave generation via two-point optical frequency division. Narrow linewidth self-injection locked integrated lasers are stabilized to a miniature Fabry-P\'{e}rot cavity, and the frequency gap between the lasers is divided with an efficient dark-soliton frequency comb. The stabilized output of the microcomb is photodetected to produce a microwave signal at 20 GHz with phase noise of -96 dBc/Hz at 100 Hz offset frequency that decreases to -135 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset--values which are unprecedented for an integrated photonic system. All photonic components can be heterogeneously integrated on a single chip, providing a significant advance for the application of photonics to high-precision navigation, communication and timing systems.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2307.08937,
title = {Photonic chip-based low noise microwave oscillator},
author = {Igor Kudelin and William Groman and Qing-Xin Ji and Joel Guo and Megan L. Kelleher and Dahyeon Lee and Takuma Nakamura and Charles A. McLemore and Pedram Shirmohammadi and Samin Hanifi and Haotian Cheng and Naijun Jin and Sam Halliday and Zhaowei Dai and Lue Wu and Warren Jin and Yifan Liu and Wei Zhang and Chao Xiang and Vladimir Iltchenko and Owen Miller and Andrey Matsko and Steven Bowers and Peter T. Rakich and Joe C. Campbell and John E. Bowers and Kerry Vahala and Franklyn Quinlan and Scott A. Diddams},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.08937},
year = {2023}
}