Ultralow Phase Noise Microwave Generation From Mode-Locked Er-Fiber Lasers With Subfemtosecond Integrated Timing Jitter

Abstract

We demonstrate ultralow phase noise 10-GHz microwave signal generation from a free-running mode-locked Er-fiber laser with -142 and -157 dBc/Hz single-sideband absolute phase noise at 10- and 100-kHz offset frequencies, respectively. The absolute RMS timing jitter is 1.5 fs when integrated from 1-kHz to 5-GHz (Nyquist frequency) offset frequency. In the 10-kHz to 10-MHz integration bandwidth typically used for microwave generators, the RMS integrated jitter is 0.49 fs. The Er-fiber laser is operated in the stretched-pulse regime at close-to-zero dispersion to minimize the phase noise of extracted microwaves. In order to suppress the excess phase noise in the optical-to-electronic conversion process, we synchronize a low-noise voltage-controlled oscillator to the fiber laser using a fiber Sagnac-loop-based optical-microwave phase detector.

7 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Sub-femtosecond synchronization of microwave oscillators with mode-locked Er-fiber lasers
• Characterization of Power-to-Phase Conversion in High-Speed P-I-N Photodiodes
• Timing jitter optimization of mode-locked Yb-fiber lasers toward the attosecond regime
• Sub-100-as timing jitter optical pulse trains from mode-locked Er-fiber lasers
• Sub-femtosecond absolute timing precision with a 10 GHz hybrid photonic-microwave oscillator

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Frequency comb-based microwave transfer over fiber with $7\times 10^{-19}$ instability using fiber-loop optical-microwave phase detectors
• Sub-20-Attosecond Timing Jitter Mode-Locked Fiber Lasers
• Characterization of timing jitter spectra in free-running mode-locked lasers with 340 dB dynamic range over 10 decades of Fourier frequency
• Ultrasensitive, high-dynamic-range and broadband strain sensing by time-of-flight detection with femtosecond-laser frequency combs
• High-precision Distribution of Highly-stable Optical Pulse Trains with Sub-10-fs Timing Jitter