Optical generation of millimeter and submillimeter-waves through optical side-band injection locking of semiconductor lasers

In this letter, we propose a novel scheme for realizing a tunable source of millimeter (mm)- and submillimeter (submm)-waves by mixing two coherent lightwaves in a wide-band photodiode. The coherent lightwaves are generated from two laser diodes injection locked to two optical side-bands generated from a overdriven phase modulator. Calculated submm-wave power at a frequency of 200 GHz generated by this method is 1.2 mW for each laser diode output power of 20 mW. The proposed method possesses a unique advantage of phase noise reduction of the generated mm-wave.