Optical data transmission at 44Tb/s and 10 bits/s/Hz over the C-band with standard fibre and a single micro-comb source

Abstract

Micro-combs [1 - 4], optical frequency combs generated by integrated micro-cavity resonators, offer the full potential of their bulk counterparts [5,6], but in an integrated footprint. The discovery of temporal soliton states (DKS dissipative Kerr solitons) [4,7-11] as a means of modelocking microcombs has enabled breakthroughs in many fields including spectroscopy [12,13], microwave photonics [14], frequency synthesis [15], optical ranging [16,17], quantum sources [18,19], metrology [20,21] and more. One of their most promising applications has been optical fibre communications where they have enabled massively parallel ultrahigh capacity multiplexed data transmission [22,23]. Here, by using a new and powerful class of microcomb called soliton crystals [11], we achieve unprecedented data transmission over standard optical fibre using a single integrated chip source. We demonstrate a line rate of 44.2 Terabits per second using the telecommunications C band at 1550nm with a spectral efficiency, a critically important performance metric, of 10.4 bits/s/Hz. Soliton crystals exhibit robust and stable generation and operation as well as a high intrinsic efficiency that, together with a low soliton microcomb spacing of 48.9 GHz enable the use of a very high coherent data modulation format of 64 QAM (quadrature amplitude modulated). We demonstrate error free transmission over 75 km of standard optical fibre in the laboratory as well as in a field trial over an installed metropolitan optical fibre network. These experiments were greatly aided by the ability of the soliton crystals to operate without stabilization or feedback control. This work demonstrates the capability of optical soliton crystal microcombs to perform in demanding and practical optical communications networks.

15 pages, 4 figures, 58 references

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• Enhancing the third-order optical nonlinear performance in CMOS devices with integrated 2D graphene oxide films
• Broadband quantum-dot frequency-modulated comb laser
• Ultra-high bandwidth fiber-optic data transmission with a single chip source
• Optical data transmission field trial @ 44Tb/s with a 49GHz Kerr soliton crystal microcomb
• Soliton Microcombs in Integrated Chalcogenide Microresonators
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• Photonic real time video image signal processor at 17Tb/s based on a Kerr microcomb
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• Temporal Cavity Solitons in a Laser-based Microcomb: A Path to a Self-Starting Pulsed Laser without Saturable Absorption
• Contrasting the relative performance of RF photonic transversal signal processors based on microcombs using discrete components versus integrated devices
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• Wavelength-division multiplexing communications using integrated soliton microcomb laser source
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• High 3rd Order Optical Kerr Nonlinearity of PdSe2 Di-chalcogenide 2D Films for Nonlinear Photonic Chips
• Optimization of a fiber Fabry-Perot resonator for low-threshold modulation instability Kerr frequency combs
• Systematic dispersion engineering of crystalline microresonators for broadband and coherent frequency comb generation
• Photonic single perceptron at Giga-OP/s speeds with Kerr microcombs for scalable optical neural networks
• Integrated Kerr frequency comb-driven silicon photonic transmitter
• Spectral shaping of fast-gain frequency combs through phases in synthetic dimensions
• Broadband photonic RF channelizer with a Kerr soliton crystal micro-comb
• Ultra-wideband free-space optical phase stabilisation
• Mapping ultrafast timing jitter in dispersion-managed 89 GHz frequency microcombs via self-heterodyne linear interferometry
• Optical Channel Aggregation by Coherent Spectral Superposition with Electro-Optic Modulators