A Cavity-Free Self-Referencing Frequency Comb
- Technology Benefits
- Increased frequency-stability of comb teeth Small cost, weight, size and power Simplified tuning
- Technology Application
- Military/weaponsDead reckoning in GPS-denied environments
- Detailed Technology Description
- Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered high-order sideband generation (HSG), a new phenomenon in the interaction of light with matter. HSG enables a new approach to creating self-referencing frequency combs that do not require cavities. Advanced terahertz-frequency sources will enable self-referencing frequency combs based on HSG with low cost, size, weight and power, eventually on the scale of a chip. The principles of HSG enable combs operating at wavelengths ranging from the long-wave infrared to the ultraviolet. Applications include robust, miniaturized, "set-and-forget" optical atomic clocks, and high-resolution spectrometers for airborne chemicals that could be deployed on a mobile platform like a cell phone.
- Others
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Background
All existing methods of generating frequency combs requires that a cavity be tuned to adjust the combs' tooth spacing. The required cavities lead to problems with miniaturization and/or noise. Octave-spinning frequency combs based on mode-locked lasers are the combs with lowest noise, but are difficult to miniaturize. Frequency combs in which the cavity is a dielectric microresonator are easy to miniaturize, but suffer from phase noise associated with the same nonlinear optical processes that are required to generate the combs.
Tech ID/UC Case
27592/2017-604-0
Related Cases
2017-604-0
- *Abstract
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A self-referencing frequency comb based on high-order sideband generation (HSG) that does not require cavities. Applications include "set-and-forget" optical atomic clocks and high-resolution spectrometers for airborne chemicals.
- *Principal Investigator
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Name: Hunter Banks
Department:
Name: Mark Sherwin
Department:
Name: Darren Valovcin
Department:
- Country/Region
- USA
