A Cavity-Free Self-Referencing Frequency Comb
Increased frequency-stability of comb teeth Small cost, weight, size and power Simplified tuning
Military/weaponsDead reckoning in GPS-denied environments
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.
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
USA
