Photonic microwave generation with high-power photodiodes

Abstract

Received Month X, XXXX; revised Month X, XXXX; accepted Month X, XXXX; posted Month X, XXXX (Doc. ID XXXXX); published Month X, XXXX We utilize and characterize high-power, high-linearity modified uni-traveling carrier (MUTC) photodiodes for low-phasenoise photonic microwave generation based on optical frequency division. When illuminated with picosecond pulses from a repetition-rate-multiplied gigahertz Ti:sapphire modelocked laser, the photodiodes can achieve 10 GHz signal power +14 dBm. Using these diodes, a 10 GHz microwave tone is generated with less than 500 attoseconds absolute integrated timing jitter (1 Hz -10 MHz) and a phase noise floor of -177 dBc/Hz. We also characterize the electrical response, amplitude-to-phase conversion, saturation and residual noise of the MUTC photodiodes.

Optical atomic clocks

“…These measurements can be made at the stability of the optical standards themselves, without being limited by the lower stability of most microwave standards. The femtosecond comb, using now standard laboratory techniques, thus enables microwave-to-optical, optical-to-microwave, and optical-to-optical phase-coherent measurements and distribution at a precision level often better than the atomic clocks (Ma et al, 2004(Ma et al, , 2007Kim et al, 2008b;Lipphardt et al, 2009;Nakajima et al, 2010;Zhang et al, 2010;Fortier et al, 2011Fortier et al, , 2013Hagemann et al, 2013;Inaba et al, 2013).…”

A collapse of the cross-spectral function in phase noise metrology

“…Finally, the photonic microwave generation from optical stabilized sources can lead to extremely low PM noise in the presence of much higher AM noise. 23,24 Under these conditions the probability of collapse may be high and the cross-spectrum must be evaluated and used very carefully.…”

Low-Drift Optoelectronic Oscillator Based on a Phase Modulator in a Sagnac Loop

“…To do so, the system is allowed to operate in a room environment for a period of 60 h. Fig. 12(a) shows the measured long-term fractional frequency drift that is ±0.05 ppm maximum fractional frequency deviation over 60 h. The fractional frequency stability (in terms of overlapping Allan deviation [68]) we also calculated using the measured frequency drift, which is shown in Fig. 12(b).…”