Femtosecond fiber lasers as ultra-stable microwave oscillators

Prof. Ömer Ilday
Department of Physics
Bilkent University

One of the key challenges for next-generation light sources is to develop a timing synchronization system with ~10 fs precision over distances up to a few kilometers. These requirements are beyond the capability of traditional RF electronics. We are developing an optical transmission system; a train of pulses generated from a fiber laser with low timing jitter is distributed over length-stabilized fiber links to remote locations. The repetition frequency of the pulse train and its harmonics contain the synchronization information. At the remote locations, RF signals are generated by a photodiode and a suitable bandpass filter picks the desired harmonic of the laser repetition rate. The same fiber lasers, combined with clever nonlinear optical processing, are emerging as interesting platforms for optical frequency metrology applications. These implications will be briefly discussed.