Optical data transmission at 44 terabits/s with a Kerr soliton crystal microcomb
Mengxi Tan, Bill Corcoran, Xingyuan Xu, Jiayang Wu, andy boes, Thach G. Nguyen, Sai T. Chu, Brent E. Little, Roberto Morandotti, Arnan Mitchell, David Moss
Abstract
We report world record high data transmission over standard optical fiber from a single optical source. We achieve a line rate of 44.2 Terabits per second (Tb/s) employing only the C-band at 1550nm, resulting in a spectral efficiency of 10.4 bits/s/Hz. We use a new and powerful class of micro-comb called soliton crystals that exhibit robust operation and stable generation as well as a high intrinsic efficiency that, together with an extremely low spacing of 48.9 GHz enables a very high coherent data modulation format of 64 QAM. We achieve error free transmission across 75 km of standard optical fiber in the lab and over a field trial with a metropolitan optical fiber network. This work demonstrates the ability of optical micro-combs to exceed other approaches in performance for the most demanding practical optical communications applications.