Demonstration of a near-IR line-referenced electro-optical laser frequency comb for precision radial velocity measurements in astronomy

An important technique for discovering and characterizing planets beyond our solar system relies upon measurement of weak Doppler shifts in the spectra of host stars induced by the influence of orbiting planets. A recent advance has been the introduction of optical frequency combs as frequency references. Frequency combs produce a series of equally spaced reference frequencies and they offer extreme accuracy and spectral grasp that can potentially revolutionize exoplanet detection. Here we demonstrate a laser frequency comb using an alternate comb generation method based on electro-optical modulation, with the comb centre wavelength stabilized to a molecular or atomic reference. In contrast to mode-locked combs, the line spacing is readily resolvable using typical astronomical grating spectrographs. Built using commercial off-the-shelf components, the instrument is relatively simple and reliable. Proof of concept experiments operated at near-infrared wavelengths were carried out at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility and the Keck-II telescope.

Laser frequency combs emit a spectrum of equally spaced peaks that can provide precise frequency references useful for astronomy. Here, the authors demonstrate a frequency comb using electro-optical modulation, which has a line spacing that is resolvable using grating spectrographs unlike the mode-locking approach.

Injection locking of a trapped-ion phonon laser

We report on injection locking of optically excited mechanical oscillations of a single, trapped ion. The injection locking dynamics are studied by analyzing the oscillator spectrum with a spatially selective Fourier transform technique and the oscillator phase with stroboscopic imaging. In both cases we find excellent agreement with theory inside and outside the locking range. We attain injection locking with forces as low as 5(1)×10{-24}  N so this system appears promising for the detection of ultraweak oscillating forces.

Highly efficient hybrid fiber taper coupled microsphere laser

A novel hybrid fiber taper is proposed and demonstrated as the coupler in a microsphere laser system. The pump wave and the laser emission, respectively, are more efficiently coupled to and from the sphere modes with this taper structure. A 980-nm pumped erbium-ytterbium codoped phosphate microsphere laser is demonstrated in the 1550-nm band. As much as 112microW of single-frequency laser output power was measured, with a differential quantum efficiency of 12%.

Advanced all-optical logic gates on a spectral bus

We present experimental results on a new method for ultrafast all-optical logic, which utilizes four-wave mixing on polarization-modulated signals. The technique allows advanced operations such as exclusive-or and three-bit addition with carry bit. Furthermore, we show that on-the-fly error-correction encoding and decoding of a simple Hamming code is achieved when these gates are used on the bits of a spectrally structured word. These gates may be suitable for logic operations in an optoelectronic front end, which moves some of the necessary computation of data to the optical domain, before detection.

Highly efficient optical power transfer to whispering-gallery modes by use of a symmetrical dual-coupling configuration

We report that greater than 99.8% optical power transfer to whispering-gallery modes was achieved in fused-silica microspheres by use of a dual-tapered-fiber coupling method. The intrinsic cavity loss and the taper-to-sphere coupling coefficient are inferred from the experimental data. It is shown that the low intrinsic cavity loss and the symmetrical dual-coupling structure are crucial for obtaining the high coupling efficiency.

Self-quenching of fundamental phase and amplitude noise in semiconductor lasers with dispersive loss

We show theoretically that the incorporation of a frequency-dependent loss mechanism in a semiconductor laser can lead, in concert with the amplitude-to-phase coupling, to major reductions of the fundamental intensity and phase noise. A loss dispersion of the wrong sign, on the other hand, leads to an increase of the noise and, at a certain strength, to instability.