Microwave synthesizer using an on-chip Brillouin oscillator
- Creators
- Li, Jiang
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Lee, Hansuek
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Vahala, Kerry J.
Abstract
Low-phase-noise microwave oscillators are important to a wide range of subjects, including communications, radar and metrology. Photonic-based microwave-wave sources now provide record, close-to-carrier phase-noise performance, and compact sources using microcavities are available commercially. Photonics-based solutions address a challenging scaling problem in electronics, increasing attenuation with frequency. A second scaling challenge, however, is to maintain low phase noise in reduced form factor and even integrated systems. On this second front, there has been remarkable progress in the area of microcavity devices with large storage time (high optical quality factor). Here we report generation of highly coherent microwaves using a chip-based device that derives stability from high optical quality factor. The device has a record low electronic white-phase-noise floor for a microcavity-based oscillator and is used as the optical, voltage-controlled oscillator in the first demonstration of a photonic-based, microwave frequency synthesizer. The synthesizer performance is comparable to mid-range commercial devices.
Additional Information
© 2013 Macmillan Publishers Limited. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. To view a copy of this licence visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/. Received 20 March 2013; Accepted 04 June 2013; Published 28 June 2013. We would like to thank Dave Howe, Scott Diddams, Scott Papp (NIST, Boulder CO) and Lute Maleki (OEWaves) for their helpful discussions and comments on this manuscript. This work was sponsored by the DARPA Orchid program. We also acknowledge the support from the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, an NSF Physics Frontiers Center with support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Kavli Nanoscience Institute. Author contributions: J.L. and K.J.V. conceived and designed the experiment. J.L. performed the measurements and data analysis with supervision by K.J.V. H.L. fabricated the devices, with assistance from J.L. All authors helped to write the paper.Attached Files
Published - ncomms3097.pdf
Supplemental Material - ncomms3097-s1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 41351
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20130916-155446100
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
- Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM)
- NSF Physics Frontiers Center
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Kavli Nanoscience Institute
- Created
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2013-09-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, Kavli Nanoscience Institute