Microwave frequency comb generation through optical double-locked semiconductor lasers

A microwave frequency comb (MFC) consists of equally spaced discrete microwave frequency components that have small magnitude variations across its bandwidth. In this work, a scheme comprising of a slave laser that is optically injected by a strongly intensity-modulated master laser is proposed and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Optik (Stuttgart) 2020-12, Vol.223, p.165506, Article 165506
Main Author: AlMulla, Mohammad
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Microwave frequency combs
Microwave photonics
Nonlinear dynamics
Optical injection
Period-one dynamics
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Summary:A microwave frequency comb (MFC) consists of equally spaced discrete microwave frequency components that have small magnitude variations across its bandwidth. In this work, a scheme comprising of a slave laser that is optically injected by a strongly intensity-modulated master laser is proposed and numerically investigated to generate MFCs. Based on the double-locking characteristics of the periodic oscillations induced by strong intensity-modulated optical injection, locked comb structures are invoked when the modulation frequency is at a submultiple frequency of the period-one oscillation frequency. Furthermore, broad microwave frequency comb bandwidths are achieved through the bandwidth enhancement effect of optically injected lasers at appropriate operating conditions. The demonstrated MFC source has a continuously tunable comb-line spacing between 1–10 GHz reaching bandwidths that are six times the relaxation resonance frequency of the free-running semiconductor laser.
ISSN:0030-4026
1618-1336
DOI:10.1016/j.ijleo.2020.165506