Harnessing optical micro-combs for microwave photonics

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in using optical micro-combs generated by micro-resonators for RF photonics, highlighting their potential, achievements, and challenges in this emerging field.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art in micro-comb applications for RF photonics and discusses future challenges for practical deployment.

Findings

Micro-combs enable compact, efficient RF photonics systems.

Significant progress has been made in micro-comb generation and integration.

Open challenges include stability, scalability, and integration for real-world applications.

Abstract

In the past decade, optical frequency combs generated by high-Q micro-resonators, or micro-combs, which feature compact device footprints, high energy efficiency, and high-repetition-rates in broad optical bandwidths, have led to a revolution in a wide range of fields including metrology, mode-locked lasers, telecommunications, RF photonics, spectroscopy, sensing, and quantum optics. Among these, an application that has attracted great interest is the use of micro-combs for RF photonics, where they offer enhanced functionalities as well as reduced size and power consumption over other approaches. This article reviews the recent advances in this emerging field. We provide an overview of the main achievements that have been obtained to date, and highlight the strong potential of micro-combs for RF photonics applications. We also discuss some of the open challenges and limitations that need to be met for practical applications.