Phase, timing, and amplitude noise on supercontinua generated in microstructure fiber

Area of Science:

• Nonlinear optics
• Quantum optics
• Fiber optics

Background:

• Supercontinuum generation in nonlinear fibers is susceptible to input noise.
• Input noise seeds can significantly increase excess noise in the output supercontinuum electric field.
• The frequency comb generated from supercontinuum exhibits phase and amplitude noise.

Purpose of the Study:

• To relate pulse-averaged moments of electric-field noise to the measured radio frequency (RF) spectrum of the frequency comb.
• To quantitatively determine the intrinsic phase and amplitude noise on the frequency comb originating from input shot noise.
• To analyze the scaling of this noise with various experimental parameters.

Main Methods:

• Numerical simulations of supercontinuum formation in nonlinear fiber.
• Analysis of the relationship between electric-field noise moments and RF spectrum measurements.
• Investigation of noise scaling with input parameters.

Main Results:

• Established a quantitative link between input noise and frequency comb noise.
• Presented numerical results for intrinsic phase and amplitude noise.
• Identified the scaling laws of noise with experimental parameters.

Conclusions:

• Input noise fundamentally limits the phase stability of frequency combs generated from microstructure fiber.
• Understanding and quantifying this intrinsic noise is crucial for advanced applications.
• The findings provide a lower bound for phase stability in fiber-based frequency combs.