RF-Photonic Frequency Stability Gear Box

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel optical technique using a monolithic microresonator to transfer and enhance the long-term frequency stability of RF oscillators without needing absolute frequency references.

Contribution

It introduces a method for long-term RF oscillator stabilization via mode locking in microresonators, improving stability transfer without absolute references.

Findings

Enhanced stability transfer from master to slave oscillator

Achieved Allan deviation of 10^-13 at 10^4s for the slave oscillator

Method does not require absolute frequency references

Abstract

An optical technique based on stability transfer among modes of a monolithic optical microresonator is proposed for long therm frequency stabilization of a radiofrequency (RF) oscillator. We show that locking two resonator modes, characterized with dissimilar sensitivity in responding to an applied forcing function, to a master RF oscillator allows enhancing the long term stability of a slave RF oscillator locked to two resonator modes having nearly identical sensitivity. For instance, the stability of a 10 MHz master oscillator characterized with Allan deviation of 10^-7 at 10^4s can be increased and transferred to a slave oscillator with identical stability performance, so that the resultant Allan deviation of the slave oscillator becomes equal to 10-13 at 10^4s. The method does not require absolute frequency references to achieve such a performance.