International audienceWe report on the design of an ultra stable microwave/THz oscillator and on the realization and the characterization of its laser source. The tunable oscillator is expected to show below -150 dB rad2/Hz phase instability at an offset frequency of 10 kHz for a 30 GHz carrier frequency, as well as 18 GHz, 100 GHz, 400 GHz and 1 THz carrier frequencies

We demonstrate a single-sideband opto-RF oscillator, based on a monolithic InGaAsP chip containing two DFB lasers. The heterodyne signal is stabilized by a hybrid method, combining optical and electronic feedback. It leads to a locking of the beating frequency onto a filtered version of itself. Our table-top setup provides a phase noise level down to-75 dBc/Hz at 1kHz offset from a 10 GHz carrier. Potential phase noise improvement and integration scheme in a single component are discussed.

International audienceWe report on an all-electrical locking of the optical frequency of a distributed feedback laser diode at 1548 nm tunable over 9 nm on a fibered Fabry-Perot cavity. We demonstrate a 7-MHz servo bandwidth and a frequency noise suppression down to 10 Hz/root Hz at 200-kHz carrier offset frequency in the error signal. From this signal, we estimate the laser linewidth to be 100 Hz at a 10-ms integration time. This stabilized laser will be a component of a compact source of continuous millimeter or submillimeter low phase noise electrical waves