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1. Direct chip-scale optical frequency divider via regenerative harmonic injection locking

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.413335  

   Bustos-Ramirez, Ricardo ; Trask, Lawrence R. ; Bhardwaj, Ashish ; Hoefler, Gloria E. ; Kish, Fred A. ; Delfyett, Peter J. ( February 2021 , Optics Letters)

   A novel optical frequency division technique, called regenerative harmonic injection locking, is used to transfer the timing stability of an optical frequency comb with a repetition rate in the millimeter wave range ($\sim <\#comment/>300\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}$) to a chip-scale mode-locked laser with a$\sim <\#comment/>10\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}$repetition rate. By doing so, the 300 GHz optical frequency comb is optically divided by a factor of$30\times <\#comment/>$to 10 GHz. The stability of the mode-locked laser after regenerative harmonic injection locking is$\sim <\#comment/>{10}^{-<\#comment/>12}$at 1 s with a$1/\mathrm{\tau <\#comment/>}$trend. To facilitate optical frequency division, a coupled opto-electronic oscillator is implemented to assist the injection locking process. This technique is exceptionally power efficient, as it uses less than$100\text{µ<\#comment/>}\mathrm{W}$of optical power to achieve stable locking.
2. Nonlocal subpicosecond delay metrology using spectral quantum interference

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.458565  

   Seshadri, Suparna ; Lingaraju, Navin ; Lu, Hsuan-Hao ; Imany, Poolad ; Leaird, Daniel E. ; Weiner, Andrew M. ( November 2022 , Optica)

   Precise knowledge of position and timing information is critical to support elementary protocols such as entanglement swapping on quantum networks. While approaches have been devised to use quantum light for such metrology, they largely rely on time-of-flight (ToF) measurements with single-photon detectors and, therefore, are limited to picosecond-scale resolution owing to detector jitter. In this work, we demonstrate an approach to distributed sensing that leverages phase modulation to map changes in the spectral phase to coincidence probability, thereby overcoming the limits imposed by single-photon detection. By extracting information about the joint biphoton phase, we measure a generalized delay—the difference in signal–idler arrival, relative to local radio frequency (RF) phase modulation. For nonlocal ranging measurements, we achieve ($2\mathrm{\sigma <\#comment/>}$) precision of$\pm <\#comment/>0.04\mathrm{p}\mathrm{s}$and for measurements of the relative RF phase, ($2\mathrm{\sigma <\#comment/>}$) precision of$\pm <\#comment/>{0.7}^{\circ <\#comment/>}$. We complement this fine timing information with ToF data from single-photon time-tagging to demonstrate absolute measurement of time delay. By relying on off-the-shelf telecommunications equipment and standard quantum resources, this approach has the potential to reduce overhead in practical quantum networks.
3. Relative timing jitter in a counterpropagating all-normal dispersion dual-comb fiber laser

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.458339  

   Prakash, Neeraj ; Huang, Shu-Wei ; Li, Bowen ( June 2022 , Optica)

   The counterpropagating all-normal dispersion (CANDi) fiber laser is an emerging high-energy single-cavity dual-comb laser source. Its relative timing jitter (RTJ), a critical parameter for dual-comb timing precision and spectral resolution, has not been comprehensively investigated. In this paper, we enhance the state-of-the-art CANDi fiber laser pulse energy from 1 nJ to 8 nJ. We then introduce a reference-free RTJ characterization technique that provides shot-to-shot measurement capability at femtosecond precision. The measurement noise floor reaches$1.6\times <\#comment/>{10}^{-<\#comment/>7}{\mathrm{f}\mathrm{s}}^2/\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}$, and the corresponding integrated measurement precision is only 1.8 fs (1 kHz, 20 MHz). With this characterization tool, we are able to study the physical origin of the CANDi laser’s RTJ in detail. We first verify that the cavity length fluctuation does not contribute to the RTJ. Then we measure the integrated RTJ to be 39 fs (1 kHz, 20 MHz) and identify the pump relative intensity noise (RIN) to be the dominant factor responsible for it. In particular, pump RIN is coupled to the RTJ through the Gordon–Haus effect. Finally, solutions to reduce the free-running CANDi laser’s RTJ are discussed. This work provides a general guideline to improve the performance of compact single-cavity dual-comb systems such as the CANDimore »laser, benefitting various dual-comb applications.

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4. Stimulated generation of deterministic platicon frequency microcombs

   https://doi.org/10.1364/PRJ.459403  

   Liu, Hao ; Huang, Shu-Wei ; Wang, Wenting ; Yang, Jinghui ; Yu, Mingbin ; Kwong, Dim-Lee ; Colman, Pierre ; Wong, Chee Wei ( July 2022 , Photonics Research)

   Dissipative Kerr soliton generation in chip-scale nonlinear resonators has recently observed remarkable advances, spanning from massively parallel communications, to self-referenced oscillators, and to dual-comb spectroscopy. Often working in the anomalous dispersion regime, unique driving protocols and dispersion in these nonlinear resonators have been examined to achieve the soliton and soliton-like temporal pulse shapes and coherent frequency comb generation. The normal dispersion regime provides a complementary approach to bridge the nonlinear dynamical studies, including the possibility of square pulse formation with flattop plateaus, or platicons. Here we report observations of square pulse formation in chip-scale frequency combs through stimulated pumping at one free spectral range and in silicon nitride rings with$+55{\mathrm{fs}}^2/\mathrm{mm}$normal group velocity dispersion. Tuning of the platicon frequency comb via a varied sideband modulation frequency is examined in both spectral and temporal measurements. Determined by second-harmonic autocorrelation and cross correlation, we observe bright square platicon pulse of 17 ps pulse width on a 19 GHz flat frequency comb. With auxiliary-laser-assisted thermal stabilization, we surpass the thermal bistable dragging and extend the mode-locking access to narrower 2 ps platicon pulse states, supported by nonlinear dynamical modeling and boundary limit discussions.
5. Widely separated optical Kerr parametric oscillation in AlN microrings

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.384317  

   Tang, Yulong ; Gong, Zheng ; Liu, Xianwen ; Tang, Hong X. ( February 2020 , Optics Letters)

   Here, we report${\mathrm{\chi <\#comment/>}}^{(3)}$-based optical parametric oscillation (OPO) with widely separated signal–idler frequencies from crystalline aluminum nitride microrings pumped at$2\text{µ<\#comment/>}\mathrm{m}$. By tailoring the width of the microring, OPO reaching toward the telecom and mid-infrared bands with a frequency separation of 64.2 THz is achieved. While dispersion engineering through changing the microring width is capable of shifting the OPO sideband by$><\#comment/>9\mathrm{T}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}$, the OPO frequency can also be agilely tuned in the ranges of 1 and 0.1 THz, respectively, by shifting the pump wavelength and controlling the chip’s temperature. At high pump powers, the OPO sidebands further evolve into localized frequency comb lines. Such large-frequency-shift OPO with flexible wavelength tunability will lead to enhanced chip-scale light sources.