High-speed tunable microwave-rate soliton microcomb

Abstract

Microwave signal generation with fast frequency tuning underlies many applications including sensing, imaging, ranging, time keeping, wireless communication, and high-speed electronics. Soliton microcombs are a promising new approach for photonic-based microwave signal synthesis. To date, however, tuning rate has been limited in microcombs (and in frequency combs generally). Here, we demonstrate the first microwave-rate soliton microcomb whose repetition rate can be tuned at a high speed. By integrating an electro-optic tuning/modulation element into a lithium niobate comb microresonator, a modulation bandwidth up to 75 MHz and a continuous frequency modulation rate up to 5.0 * 10^14 Hz/s are achieved, several orders-of-magnitude faster than existing microcomb technology. These features are especially useful for disciplining an optical VCO to a long-term reference such as an optical clock or for tight phase lock in dual-microcomb clocks or synthesizers. Moreover, the microwave signal rate can be set to any X - W band rate. Besides its positive impact on microwave photonics, fast repetition rate control is generally important in all applications of frequency combs.

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Lithium tantalate electro-optical photonic integrated circuits for high volume manufacturing
• Octave-spanning Kerr soliton frequency combs in dispersion- and dissipation-engineered lithium niobate microresonators
• Phase-stabilised self-injection-locked microcomb
• A chip-based optoelectronic-oscillator frequency comb
• Soliton microcombs in X-cut LiNbO3 microresonators