Optical Frequency Combs Generated in Silica Microspheres in the Telecommunication C-, U-, and E-Bands
Optical frequency combs (OFCs) generated in microresonators with whispering gallery modes are demanded for different applications including telecommunications. Extending operating spectral ranges is an important problem for wavelength-division multiplexing systems based on microresonators. We demonstrate experimentally three spectrally separated OFCs in the C-, U-, and E-bands in silica microspheres which, in principle, can be used for telecommunication applications. For qualitative explanation of the OFC generation in the sidebands, we calculated gain coefficients and gain bandwidths for degenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) processes. We also attained a regime when the pump frequency was in t…
Demonstration of a fiber optical communication system employing a silica microsphere-based OFC source.
The fabrication of microsphere resonators and the generation of optical frequency combs (OFC) have achieved a significant breakthrough in the past decade. Despite these advances, no studies have reported the experimental implementation and demonstration of silica microsphere OFCs for data transmission. In this work, to the best of our knowledge, we experimentally for the first time present a designed silica microsphere whispering-gallery-mode microresonator (WGMR) OFC as a C-band light source where 400 GHz spaced carriers provide data transmission of up to 10 Gbps NRZ-OOK modulated signals over the standard ITU-T G.652 telecom fiber span of 20 km in length. A proof-of-concept experiment is …
Kerr Optical Frequency Combs With Multi-FSR Mode Spacing in Silica Microspheres
We experimentally demonstrate Kerr optical frequency combs (OFCs) with mode spacing of 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 8 free spectral ranges (FSRs) corresponding to 0.4, 0.8, 1.2, 2, 2.4, and 3.2 THz, respectively, in silica microspheres pumped by CW C-band lasers in the anomalous dispersion range. Experimental realizations are based on using standard telecom equipment and components such as SMF-28e fiber for producing microspheres and fiber tapers for pump coupling and OFC outcoupling. Numerical simulation is performed to support the experimental results and explain the observed spectral asymmetry in OFCs by the influence of the 3rd-order dispersion.
Frequency comb generation in whispering gallery mode silica microsphere resonators
Optical frequency combs (OFC) using different kinds of whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) microresonators have already shown different applications and especially their applications in fiber optical communication systems as replacements of laser-arrays. For this application the free spectral range (FSR) of 200 GHz or less is desirable. Besides the fabrication material for microspheres, the resonator radius can be modified to change the FSR. In this paper use of silica microspheres for OFC represents an inexpensive alternative over the other microcombs: microring, microdisk, and microtoroid. We experimentally present a microsphere fabrication process from a different kind of silica (SiO2) fibers …