Multiheterodyne Detection and Sampling of Periodically Filtered White Light for Correlations at 20 km of Delay

Author

Bagnell, Marcus ; Davila-Rodriguez, Josue ; Williams, Charles ; Delfyett, Peter J.

Author_Institution

Coll. of Opt. & Photonics, Univ. of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

Volume

4

Issue

2

fYear

2012

fDate

4/1/2012 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

504

Lastpage

511

Abstract

A frequency comb is used as a set of coherent local oscillators to downconvert and spectrally compress white light that has been periodically filtered by a Fabry-Perot etalon. Multiheterodyne detection allows white light spread across 100 GHz of optical spectrum to be compressed to 5 GHz of radio frequency (RF) bandwidth for electronic sampling on an oscilloscope. Correlations are observed at delays of up to 20 km with a minimum resolution of less than 1 mm. Calculations show that resolution may be easily increased by increasing etalon finesse and frequency comb bandwidth.

Keywords

Fabry-Perot interferometers; heterodyne detection; laser frequency stability; laser mode locking; optical frequency conversion; optical signal detection; oscilloscopes; Fabry-Perot etalon; bandwidth 5 GHz; coherent local oscillators; etalon finesse; frequency comb bandwidth; multiheterodyne detection; periodically filtered white light; spectral compression; Correlation; Delay; Frequency domain analysis; Optical filters; Radio frequency; Resonant frequency; Frequency combs; heterodyne; mode-locked lasers; ultrafast measurements;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Journal, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1943-0655

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JPHOT.2012.2191768

Filename

6174520