Photonic circuits for laser stabilization with ultra-low-loss and nonlinear resonators

Abstract

Laser-frequency stabilization with on-chip photonic integrated circuits will provide compact, low cost solutions to realize spectrally pure laser sources. Developing high-performance and scalable lasers is critical for applications including quantum photonics, precision navigation and timing, spectroscopy, and high-capacity fiber communications. We demonstrate a significant advance in compact, stabilized lasers to achieve a record low integral emission linewidth and precision carrier stabilization by combining integrated waveguide nonlinear Brillouin and ultra-low loss waveguide reference resonators. Using a pair of 56.4 Million quality factor (Q) Si${}_3$N${}_4$ waveguide ring-resonators, we reduce the free running Brillouin laser linewidth by over an order of magnitude to 330 Hz integral linewidth and stabilize the carrier to 6.5$\times$10${}^{-13}$ fractional frequency at 8 ms, reaching the cavity-intrinsic thermorefractive noise limit for frequencies down to 80 Hz. This work demonstrates the lowest linewidth and highest carrier stability achieved to date using planar, CMOS compatible photonic integrated resonators, to the best of our knowledge. These results pave the way to transfer stabilized laser technology from the tabletop to the chip-scale. This advance makes possible scaling the number of stabilized lasers and complexity of atomic and molecular experiments as well as reduced sensitivity to environmental disturbances and portable precision atomic, molecular and optical (AMO) solutions.

References in corpus (25)

• Microresonator solitons for massively parallel coherent optical communications
• A sub-40 mHz linewidth laser based on a silicon single-crystal optical cavity
• 1.5 $\mu$m lasers with sub 10 mHz linewidth
• Hertz-linewidth semiconductor lasers using CMOS-ready ultra-high-$Q$ microresonators
• Cold molecules: Progress in Quantum Engineering of Chemistry and Quantum Matter
• Nanophotonic soliton-based microwave synthesizers
• Optical data transmission at 44Tb/s and 10 bits/s/Hz over the C-band with standard fibre and a single micro-comb source
• Making optical atomic clocks more stable with $10^{-16}$ level laser stabilization
• Sub-Hz Linewidth Photonic-Integrated Brillouin Laser
• Integrated Waveguide Brillouin Laser
• Photonic Damascene Process for Integrated High-Q Microresonator Based Nonlinear Photonics
• 422 Million Q Planar Integrated All-Waveguide Resonator with a 3.4 Billion Absorption Limited Q and Sub-MHz Linewidth
• Probing the loss origins of ultra-smooth $\mathrm{S}{\mathrm{i}}_3{\mathrm{N}}_4$ integrated photonic waveguides
• Integrated Fabry-Perot cavities as a mechanism for enhancing micro-ring resonator performance
• High-performance lasers for fully integrated silicon nitride photonics
• Reconfigurable electro-optic frequency shifter
• Fundamental thermal fluctuations in microspheres
• Ultra-narrow linewidth hybrid integrated semiconductor laser
• Thermo-refractive noise in silicon nitride microresonators
• Recent advances on integrated quantum communications
• Sub-Doppler Cooling and Compressed Trapping of YO Molecules at $\mu$K Temperatures
• Optimization of laser stabilization via self-injection locking to WGM microresonator
• Fundamental noise dynamics in cascaded-order Brillouin lasers
• Cluster State Generation with Spin-Orbit Coupled Fermionic Atoms in Optical Lattices
• Thermal and driven noise in Brillouin Lasers

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Octave Spanning Visible to SWIR Integrated Coil-Stabilized Brillouin Lasers