Coherent terabit communications with microresonator Kerr frequency combs

By J. Pfeifle, Victor Brasch, M. Lauermann, Yimin Yu, D. Wegner, Tobias Herr, K. Hartinger, P. Schindler, Jingshi Li, D. Hillerkuss and 7 more. Nature Photonics, 2013

654 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Kerr frequency combs are well suited for high-capacity data transmission with phase-sensitive modulation formats. This work demonstrates error-free transmission with data rates of up to 1.44 Tbit s−1, spectral efficiencies of up to 6 bit s−1 Hz−1 and transmission distances of up to 300 km. Optical frequency combs have the potential to revolutionize terabit communications1. The generation of Kerr combs in nonlinear microresonators2 is particularly promising3, enabling line spacings of tens of gigahertz. However, such combs may exhibit strong phase noise4,5,6, which has made high-speed data transmission impossible up to now. Here, we demonstrate that systematic adjustment of the pump conditions for low phase noise4,7,8,9 enables coherent data transmission with advanced modulation formats that pose stringent requirements on the spectral purity of the comb. In a first experiment, we encode a data stream of 392 Gbit s−1 on a Kerr comb using quadrature phase-shift keying and 16-state quadrature amplitude modulation. A second experiment demonstrates feedback stabilization of the comb and transmission of a 1.44 Tbit s–1 data stream over up to 300 km. The results show that Kerr combs meet the highly demanding requirements of coherent communications and thus offer an attractive route towards chip-scale terabit-per-second transceivers.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8dfdfcebedc6ac1e8ca2c3d31d0ead9871cfc57f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Silicon Nitride in Silicon Photonics (2018, methodology): “This comb generator was used to demonstrate a parallel WDM coherent fiber communications link operating at tens of terabits per second [111].”
Soliton frequency comb at microwave rates in a high-Q silica microresonator (2015, background): “They have been applied in demonstrations of microwave generation [12], waveform synthesis [18], optical atomic clocks [21] and coherent communications [22].”
RF Photonics: An Optical Microcombs’ Perspective (2018, neutral): “lasers [27]–[30], telecommunications [31]–[35], RF photonics [36]–[40], and quantum optics [41]–[44].”
Temporal solitons in microresonators driven by optical pulses (2016, background): “Already now, such frequency combs have found application in coherent optical data transfer[34], arbitrary optical waveform generation[35], ultra-low noise electronic signal generation[21, 36, 37] and also hold promise for astronomical spectrometer calibration[38–40].”
Nonlinear photonics with high-Q whispering-gallery-mode resonators (2017, methodology): “44 Tbit/s has been achieved using quadrature phase shift keying on a Kerr comb originating from an integrated ring resonator [228].”
High-Q silicon nitride microresonators exhibiting low-power frequency comb initiation (2016, background): “In particular, FC generation in high-Q microresonators has attracted intense attention with target applications ranging from optical clocks and frequency metrology [11] to more novel techniques in high-speed telecommunication [12] and RF photonics [13].”