Ultrafast laser frequency microcombs provide equidistant coherent frequency markers over a broad spectrum, enabling new frontiers in chip-scale frequency metrology, laser spectroscopy, dense communications, precision metrology. Measuring and understanding the fundamental noise parameters in these high-clock-rate frequency microcombs are essential to advance the underlying physics and the precision microwave-optical clockwork. In this talk we describe the noise characteristics and timing jitter in adiabatic laser frequency microcombs. We compare and contrast the fundamental noise and fluctuation parameters for a series of laser frequency microcomb states, from multiple soliton to soliton crystals and single-soliton regimes. Each of the noise families and their noise coupling mechanisms are examined with our theoretical models. This aids the understanding of frequency, intensity and phase noise characteristics of frequency microcombs towards the precision limits.
Femtosecond mode-locked laser frequency combs have served as the cornerstone in precision spectroscopy, all-optical atomic clocks, and measurements of ultrafast dynamics. Recently frequency microcombs based on nonlinear microresonators have been examined – affording remarkable precision approaching that of laser frequency combs, and now on a solid-state chip-scale platform and from a fundamentally different physical origin. Here we unravel the transitional dynamics of frequency microcombs from chaotic background routes to femtosecond mode-locking in real-time, enabled by our ultrafast temporal magnifier metrology and enlarged stability of dispersion-managed dissipative solitons. Through our dispersion-managed oscillator, we report a stability zone more than an order-of-magnitude larger than prior static homogeneous counterparts, providing a novel platform for understanding ultrafast dissipative dynamics and offering a new path towards high-power frequency microcombs.
The spontaneous breaking of symmetry and homogeneity through dissipative pattern formation is a long-standing fundamental examination in mathematics and nonlinear physics. Self-organized patterns arise in nature, and are postulated to occur from stochastically driven nonlinear processes. These threshold-dependent patterns can be remarkably robust in the presence of noise. In this talk we describe the dispersive dynamics in nonlinear resonator frequency microcombs and their statistical distributions. We describe the frame-by-frame fluctuations in the different microcomb states including fast breathers and their thresholds. These observed self-organized patterns support applications in communications and the understanding of nonlinear physics at the fundamental limits.
In this talk, first, we describe chip-scale coherent mode-locking in microresonator frequency combs, verified by interferometric femtosecond timing jitter measurements and phase-resolved ultrafast spectroscopy. Normal dispersion sub-100-fs mode-locking is also observed, supporting by nonlinear modeling and analytics. Second we describe the noise limits in full microcomb stabilization, locking down both repetition rate and one comb line against a reference. Active stabilization improves the long-term stability to an instrument-limited residual instability of 3.6 mHz per root tau and a tooth-to-tooth relative frequency uncertainty down to 50 mHz and 2.7×10−16. Third we describe graphene-silicon nitride hybrid microresonators for tunable frequency modes, variants of soliton mode-locked states and crystals, and controllable Cerenkov radiation. Our studies provide a platform towards precision spectroscopy, frequency metrology, timing clocks, and coherent communications.
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