Generation of very flat optical frequency combs from continuous-wave lasers using cascaded intensity and phase modulators driven by tailored radio frequency waveforms

TL;DR

This paper presents a method using cascaded lithium niobate modulators driven by tailored RF waveforms to generate highly flat optical frequency combs with over 60 lines, enabling efficient pulse compression.

Contribution

The authors introduce a novel scheme for generating flat optical frequency combs with high spectral flatness and scalable line numbers using tailored radio frequency waveforms.

Findings

Achieved a 10 GHz comb with ~40 lines and spectral variation below 1 dB.

Generated over 60 lines with spectral flatness maintained.

Spectral phase is nearly quadratic, enabling high-quality pulse compression.

Abstract

We demonstrate a scheme, based on a cascade of lithium niobate intensity and phase modulators driven by specially tailored radio frequency waveforms to generate an optical frequency comb with very high spectral flatness. In this work we demonstrate a 10 GHz comb with ~40 lines with spectral power variation below 1-dB and ~60 lines in total. The number of lines that can be generated is limited by the power handling capability of the phase modulator, and this can be scaled without compromising the spectral flatness. Furthermore, the spectral phase of the generated combs in our scheme is almost purely quadratic which, as we will demonstrate, allows for very high quality pulse compression using only single mode fiber.