Phase locking and homodyne detection of repetitive laser pulses.

A method to realize pulse laser phase locking and homodyne detection is proposed, which can be used in lidar and continuous variable quantum key distribution (CVQKD) systems. Theoretical analysis shows that homodyne detection of pulse laser has a sensitivity advantage of more than 4 dB over heterodyne detection. An experimental verification setup was constructed to realize phase-locking and homodyne detection of pulse lasers at repetition rates from 50 kHz to 2.4 MHz. For 320 ns signal laser pulses at 300 kHz with peak power of -65 dBm, the phase error is 8.9° (mainly limited by the chirp effect in the modulation of signal laser), and the detection signal-to-noise ratio reaches 20.2 dB. When the peak power is reduced to -75 dBm, phase locking and homodyne detection can still be achieved. Homodyne detection based on phase locking could serve as a novel weak-laser-pulse receiving method with high sensitivity and anti-interference performance.