Observation of correlation between route to formation, coherence, noise, and communication performance of Kerr combs

Pei-Hsun Wang, Purdue University
Fahmida Ferdous, Purdue University
Houxun Miao, National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST); University of Maryland College Park
Jian Wang, Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University
Daniel E. Leaird, Purdue University
Kartik Srinivasan, National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST)
Lei Chen, National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST)
Vladimir Aksyuk, National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST)
Andrew M. Weiner, Purdue University

Abstract

Microresonator optical frequency combs based on cascaded four-wave mixing are potentially attractive as a multi-wavelength source for on-chip optical communications. In this paper we compare time domain coherence, radio-frequency (RF) intensity noise, and individual line optical communications performance for combs generated from two different silicon nitride microresonators. The comb generated by one microresonator forms directly with lines spaced by a single free spectral range (FSR) and exhibits high coherence, low noise, and excellent 10 Gbit/s optical communications results. The comb generated by the second microresonator forms initially with multiple FSR line spacing, with additional lines later filling to reach single FSR spacing. This comb exhibits degraded coherence, increased intensity noise, and severely degraded communications performance. This study is to our knowledge the first to simultaneously investigate and observe a correlation between the route to comb formation, the coherence, noise, and optical communications performance of a Kerr comb. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America

Discipline(s)

Nanoscience and Nanotechnology