Optical Frequency Comb Generation based on Erbium Fiber Lasers

Abstract

Optical frequency combs have revolutionized optical frequency metrology and are being actively investigated in a number of applications outside of pure optical frequency metrology. For reasons of cost, robustness, performance, and flexibility, the erbium fiber laser frequency comb has emerged as the most commonly used frequency comb system and many different designs of erbium fiber frequency combs have been demonstrated. We review the different approaches taken in the design of erbium fiber frequency combs, including the major building blocks of the underlying mode-locked laser, amplifier, supercontinuum generation and actuators for stabilization of the frequency comb.

Mid-Infrared Tunable Laser-Based Broadband Fingerprint Absorption Spectroscopy for Trace Gas Sensing: A Review

“…The spectrum of such a pulse train approximates a series of Dirac delta functions separated by the repetition rate of the laser. In the past decade, there have been hundreds of demonstrations of generating OFC with various lasers including Ti: sapphire solid-state lasers [81], Er: fiber lasers [82], Kerr-lens mode-locked lasers [83], QCLs [84], and ICLs [85] with repetition rates typically between to MHz to 10 GHz. The issues with mode-locked OFC are lower output power, still experimental, and not commercially available.…”

Fully self-referenced frequency comb consuming 5 watts of electrical power

“…Applications such as comb spectroscopy [3,4], femtosecond timing dissemination [5], low-noise microwave generation [6,7], and portable optical clocks [8,9] all require practical, fieldable frequency combs. While chip-scale combs may one day be a practical alternative [10], the current solution for fieldable combs remains fiber frequency combs with polarization-maintaining (PM) erbium (Er) fiber [11][12][13][14]. Self-referenced fiber frequency combs have already been demonstrated in moving vehicles [15], sounding rockets [16], industrial environments [17] and remote field sites [18].…”

Simple optical frequency comb generation using a passively mode-locked quantum dot laser

“…One technique is to use a mode-locked laser (MLL) [4,5]. MLL based OFCs are broadband with many comb lines, but they are in lack of controllability of optical frequency interval.…”

“…Experimentally, we have generated quasi-tunable OFC with frequency intervals of 23.3 GHz, 35 GHz and 70 GHz, which spreads across simultaneous and seamless 86, 56 and 30 comb lines in a 10-dB spectrum bandwidth, respectively. Compared with the reported OFC generators [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], this scheme is not using polarization controllers, optical filters and optical phase lock loops, so it is considered very simple. Using this technique, it is easy to generate quasi-tunable and low phase noise OFCs with seamless broadband and high stability.…”