An All-Polarization-Maintaining Multi-Branch Optical Frequency Comb for Highly Sensitive Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy

We demonstrate a multi-branch all polarization-maintaining Er:fiber frequency comb with five application ports for precise measurement of atomic/molecular transition frequencies in the near-infrared region.A fully stabilized Er:fiber frequency comb with a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror is achieved.The in-loop relative instability of stabilized carrier-envelope-offset frequency is 5.6×10-18 at 1 s integration time,while that of the repetition rate is well below 1.8×10-12 limited by the measurement noise floor of the commercial frequency counter.Five application ports are individually optimized for applications with different wavelengths(1064 nm,1083 nm,1380 nm,1637 nm and 1750 nm).The beat note between the optical frequency comb and continuous laser exhibits the signal-to-noise ratio of at least 30 dB at a resolution bandwidth of 100 kHz.The in-loop frequency instability of the comb is evaluated to be good enough for measurement of rotation-resolved transitions of molecules below 1 kHz resolution.

Supercontinuum generation of highly nonlinear fibers pumped by 1.57-μm laser soliton

Highly nonlinear fibers(HNLFs) are crucial components for supercontinuum(SC) generation with laser solution.However, it is difficult to exactly estimate the structure of produced SC according to material parameters. To give a guideline for choosing and using HNLFs for erbium-fiber-based optical applications, we demonstrate SC generation in five types of HNLFs pumped by 1.57-μm laser solitons. All five fibers output a SC exceeding 1000 nm. Three different SC formation processes were observed in the experiment. By comparing optical parameters of these fibers, we find the zero dispersion wavelength(ZDW) of fiber has an important influence on the SC structure and energy distribution for a given pump source.

Residual Phase Noise and Time Jitters of Single-Chip Digital Frequency Dividers

In this paper, we demonstrate the residual phase noise of a few microwave frequency dividers which usually limit the performance of frequency synthesizers. In order to compare these dividers under different operation frequencies, we calculate additional time jitters of these dividers by using the measured phase noise. The time jitters are various from -0.1 fs to 43 fs in a bandwidth from 1 Hz to 100 Hz in dependent of models and operation frequencies. The HMC series frequency dividers exhibit outstanding performance for high operation frequencies, and the time jitters can be sub-fs. The time jitters of SP8401, MC10EP139, and MC100LVEL34 are comparable or even below that of HMC series for low operation frequencies.