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      Optical frequency comb generation from a monolithic microresonator

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          Abstract

          Optical frequency combs provide equidistant frequency markers in the infrared, visible and ultra-violet and can link an unknown optical frequency to a radio or microwave frequency reference. Since their inception frequency combs have triggered major advances in optical frequency metrology and precision measurements and in applications such as broadband laser-based gas sensing8 and molecular fingerprinting. Early work generated frequency combs by intra-cavity phase modulation while to date frequency combs are generated utilizing the comb-like mode structure of mode-locked lasers, whose repetition rate and carrier envelope phase can be stabilized. Here, we report an entirely novel approach in which equally spaced frequency markers are generated from a continuous wave (CW) pump laser of a known frequency interacting with the modes of a monolithic high-Q microresonator13 via the Kerr nonlinearity. The intrinsically broadband nature of parametric gain enables the generation of discrete comb modes over a 500 nm wide span (ca. 70 THz) around 1550 nm without relying on any external spectral broadening. Optical-heterodyne-based measurements reveal that cascaded parametric interactions give rise to an optical frequency comb, overcoming passive cavity dispersion. The uniformity of the mode spacing has been verified to within a relative experimental precision of 7.3*10(-18).

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          04 August 2007
          Article
          10.1038/nature06401
          0708.0611
          82425a98-529c-49c3-9240-afadbf695b48
          History
          Custom metadata
          Nature 450, 1214-1217, 2007
          Manuscript and Supplementary Information
          physics.optics physics.atm-clus

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