Attosecond Timing in Optical-to-Electrical Conversion

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that attosecond-level timing stability can be maintained during optical-to-electrical conversion in photodiodes, enabling ultra-stable microwave signal generation from optical frequency combs.

Contribution

It shows that photodiodes can preserve attosecond timing stability despite slower response times, with flicker noise behavior and extremely low fractional frequency fluctuations.

Findings

Flicker noise behavior with 4 as/√Hz amplitude at 1 Hz offset.

Fractional frequency fluctuations of 1.4x10^-17 at 1 second.

Supports timing performance comparable to optical frequency standards.

Abstract

The most frequency-stable sources of electromagnetic radiation are produced optically, and optical frequency combs provide the means for high fidelity frequency transfer across hundreds of terahertz and into the microwave domain. A critical step in this photonic-based synthesis of microwave signals is the optical-to-electrical conversion process. Here we show that attosecond (as) timing stability can be preserved across the opto-electronic interface of a photodiode, despite an intrinsic temporal response that is more than six orders of magnitude slower. The excess timing noise in the photodetection of a periodic train of ultrashort optical pulses behaves as flicker noise (1/f) with amplitude of 4 as/Sqrt(Hz) at 1 Hz offset. The corresponding fractional frequency fluctuations are 1.4x10-17 at 1 second and 5.5x10-20 at 1000 seconds. These results demonstrate that direct photodetection, as part of frequency-comb-based microwave synthesis, can support the timing performance of the best optical frequency standards, and thereby opens the possibility for generating microwave signals with significantly better stability than any existing source.