Wang Beichen, Yang Zijiao, Zhang Xiaobao, Yi Xu
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 22904, USA.
Department of Physics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 22904, USA.
Nat Commun. 2020 Aug 7;11(1):3975. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-17843-9.
Microresonator solitons are critical to miniaturize optical frequency combs to chip scale and have the potential to revolutionize spectroscopy, metrology and timing. With the reduction of resonator diameter, high repetition rates up to 1 THz become possible, and they are advantageous to wavelength multiplexing, coherent sampling, and self-referencing. However, the detection of comb repetition rate, the precursor to all comb-based applications, becomes challenging at these repetition rates due to the limited bandwidth of photodiodes and electronics. Here, we report a dual-comb Vernier frequency division method to vastly reduce the required electrical bandwidth. Free-running 216 GHz "Vernier" solitons sample and divide the main soliton's repetition frequency from 197 GHz to 995 MHz through electrical processing of a pair of low frequency dual-comb beat notes. Our demonstration relaxes the instrumentation requirement for microcomb repetition rate detection, and could be applied for optical clocks, optical frequency division, and microwave photonics.
微谐振器孤子对于将光学频率梳小型化至芯片规模至关重要，并且有可能彻底改变光谱学、计量学和计时技术。随着谐振器直径的减小，高达1太赫兹的高重复率成为可能，这有利于波长复用、相干采样和自参考。然而，梳状重复率的检测作为所有基于梳状的应用的前提，在这些重复率下由于光电二极管和电子设备的带宽有限而变得具有挑战性。在此，我们报告一种双梳游标分频方法，以大幅降低所需的电带宽。自由运行的216吉赫兹“游标”孤子通过对一对低频双梳拍频信号进行电处理，对主孤子的重复频率进行采样并从197吉赫兹分频至995兆赫兹。我们的演示放宽了对微梳重复率检测的仪器要求，并且可应用于光钟、光分频和微波光子学。
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