Photonic microwave signals with zeptosecond-level absolute timing noise
By Xiaopeng Xie, R. Bouchand, D. Nicolodi, M. Giunta, W. Hänsel, M. Lezius, A. Joshi, S. Datta, C. Alexandre, M. Lours and 4 more. Nature Photonics, 2016
361 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Ultralow-noise microwave signals are generated at 12 GHz by a low-noise fibre-based frequency comb and cutting-edge photodetection techniques. The microwave signals have a fractional frequency stability below 6.5 × 10–16 at 1 s and a timing noise floor below 41 zs Hz–1/2. Photonic synthesis of radiofrequency (RF) waveforms revived the quest for unrivalled microwave purity because of its ability to convey the benefits of optics to the microwave world1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11. In this work, we perform a high-fidelity transfer of frequency stability between an optical reference and a microwave signal via a low-noise fibre-based frequency comb and cutting-edge photodetection techniques. We demonstrate the generation of the purest microwave signal with a fractional frequency stability below 6.5 × 10−16 at 1 s and a timing noise floor below 41 zs Hz−1/2 (phase noise below −173 dBc Hz−1 for a 12 GHz carrier). This outperforms existing sources and promises a new era for state-of-the-art microwave generation. The characterization is achieved through a heterodyne cross-correlation scheme with the lowermost detection noise. This unprecedented level of purity can impact domains such as radar systems12, telecommunications13 and time–frequency metrology2,14. The measurement methods developed here can benefit the characterization of a broad range of signals.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ccfcefb94d34f31d42a712609a697d2f5e659f97
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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
In Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Citations in the corpus
- Microwave Photonic Radars (2020, background): “applications, such as low-noise microwave signal generation [166], [167], optical sampling and ADC [112], [168], [169], Fourier transform [170], [171], phase detection [172]–[174],”