Parametric Generation of Tunable Light from Continuous-Wave to Femtosecond Pulses

Dunn, Malcolm H.; Ebrahim-Zadeh, M.

doi:10.1126/science.286.5444.1513

Cited by 234 publications

(130 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…In contrast to stimulated gain, parametric frequency conversion [22] does not involve coupling to a dissipative reservoir, is broadband as it does not rely on atomic or molecular resonances and constitutes a phase sensitive amplification process, making it uniquely suited for tunable frequency conversion. In the case of a material with inversion symmetry -such as silica -the non linear optical effects are dominated by the third order non linearity.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Optical frequency comb generation from a monolithic microresonator

Del’Haye

Schließer

Arcizet

et al. 2007

Nature

1,981

1,275

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Optical frequency combs [1,2,3] provide equidistant frequency markers in the infrared, visible and ultra-violet [4,5] and can link an unknown optical frequency to a radio or microwave frequency reference [6,7]. Since their inception frequency combs have triggered major advances in optical frequency metrology and precision measurements [6,7] and in applications such as broadband laser-based gas sensing [8] and molecular fingerprinting [9]. Early work generated frequency combs by intra-cavity phase modulation [10,11], while to date frequency combs are generated utilizing the comb-like mode structure of mode-locked lasers, whose repetition rate and carrier envelope phase can be stabilized [12]. Here, we report an entirely novel approach in which equally spaced frequency markers are generated from a continuous wave (CW) pump laser of a known frequency interacting with the modes of a monolithic high-Q microresonator [13] via the Kerr nonlinearity [14,15]. The intrinsically broadband nature of parametric gain enables the generation of discrete comb modes over a 500 nm wide span (≈ 70 THz) around 1550 nm without relying on any external spectral broadening. Optical-heterodyne-based measurements reveal that cascaded parametric interactions give rise to an optical frequency comb, overcoming passive cavity dispersion. The uniformity of the mode spacing has been verified to within a relative experimental precision of 7.3×10 −18 . In contrast to femtosecond mode-locked lasers[16] the present work represents an enabling step towards a monolithic optical frequency comb generator allowing significant reduction in size, cost and power consumption. Moreover, the present approach can operate at previously unattainable repetition rates [17] exceeding 100 GHz which are useful in applications where the access to individual comb modes is required, such as optical waveform synthesis [18], high capacity telecommunications or astrophysical spectrometer calibration [19].Optical microcavities [20] are owing to their long temporal and small spatial light confinement ideally suited for nonlinear frequency conversion, which has led to a dramatic improvement in the threshold of nonlinear optical light conversion [21]. In contrast to stimulated gain, parametric frequency conversion [22] does not involve coupling to a dissipative reservoir, is broadband as it does not rely on atomic or molecular resonances and constitutes a phase sensitive amplification process, making it uniquely suited for tunable frequency conversion. In the case of a material with inversion symmetry -such as silica -the non linear optical effects are dominated by the third order non linearity. The process is based on four-wave mixing among two pump photons (frequency ν P ) with a signal (ν S ) and idler photon (ν I ) and results in the emergence of (phase coherent) signal and idler sidebands from the vacuum fluctuations at the expense of the pump field (cf. Fig.1). The observation of parametric interactions requires two conditions to be satisfied. First momentum conservation...

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Optical frequency comb generation from a monolithic microresonator

Del’Haye

Schließer

Arcizet

et al. 2007

Nature

1,981

1,275

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“…[1][2][3] Type-I second harmonic (SH) generation in beta barium borate (BBO), for instance, is possible for SH wavelengths ranging from 0.2 lm in the ultraviolet up to around 1.5 lm in the infrared. 4 The general limits of this type of phase-matching range are given by the birefringence and the transparency window of the nonlinear material used.…”

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confidence: 99%

Wide-range cyclic phase matching and second harmonic generation in whispering gallery resonators

Lin

Fürst

Strekalov

et al. 2013

Applied Physics Letters

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We report on a wide-range efficient method for optical second harmonic generation based on a whispering gallery mode resonator made from crystalline beta barium borate. In this single resonator, we were able to generate second harmonic fields for four different pump wavelengths ranging from the infrared (1557 nm) to the visible (634 nm) regime. The highest conversion efficiencies achieved in this whispering gallery mode resonator are as high as 4.6% (mW)−1. This conversion process is based on type-I phase matching with continuously varying optical axis orientation in an xy-cut configuration of the resonator. In such a geometry, the second harmonic whispering gallery mode experiences an oscillatory modulation of the refractive index. This enables wide-range cyclic phase matching along the circumference of the disk resonator.

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“…Optical parametric amplification (OPA) has demonstrated unique flexibility in producing femtosecond laser pulses tunable from 0.2 to 20 µm [1] . To increase the availability of ultra-short pulses with higher peak power, the scheme of chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) was introduced [2] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pump phase transfer and its control in hybrid seeded optical parametric amplifiers

Yuan¹,

Ma²,

Wang³

et al. 2014

High Pow Laser Sci Eng

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Due to the existence of spatial walk-off and/or group-velocity mismatch effects, pump-to-signal phase transfer becomes inevitable during parametric amplification. We experimentally demonstrate that in hybrid seeded optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs) that include two OPA stages seeded by the signal and idler waves, respectively, the phase of the output signal can be restored to its initial value, although there are spatial and temporal phase fluctuations on the pump source. This method significantly relaxes the requirement for high pump beam quality, which is always very stringent in parametric amplification systems. With the introduction of this scheme into birefringent phase-matching OPAs or chirped-pulse OPAs, it should be promising to achieve intense femtosecond laser pulses that are close to the diffraction limit in space and ultra-high contrast in time, simultaneously.

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Parametric Generation of Tunable Light from Continuous-Wave to Femtosecond Pulses

Cited by 234 publications

References 58 publications

Optical frequency comb generation from a monolithic microresonator

Optical frequency comb generation from a monolithic microresonator

Wide-range cyclic phase matching and second harmonic generation in whispering gallery resonators

Pump phase transfer and its control in hybrid seeded optical parametric amplifiers

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