High power optical frequency comb with 10<sup>−19</sup> frequency instability
Xiaodong Shao, Hainian Han, Huibo Wang, Junyi Ma, Yue Hu, Chengzhi Li, Hao Teng, Guoqing Chang, Bingbing Wang, Zhiyi Wei
Abstract
Optical frequency combs with more than 10 W have paved the way for extreme ultraviolet combs generation by interaction with inert gases, leading to extreme nonlinear spectroscopy and the ultraviolet nuclear clock. Recently, the demand for an ultra-long-distance time and frequency space transfer via optical dual-comb proposes a new challenge for high power frequency comb in respect of power scaling and optical frequency stability. Here we present a frequency comb based on fiber chirped pulse amplification (CPA), which can offer more than 20 W output power. We further characterize the amplifier branch noise contribution by comparing two methods of locking to an optical reference and measure the out-of-loop frequency instability by heterodyning two identical high-power combs. Thanks to the low noise CPA, reasonable locking method, and optical path-controlled amplifiers, the out-of-loop beat note between two combs demonstrates the unprecedented frequency stability of 4.35 × 10 −17 at 1s and 6.54 × 10 −19 at 1000 s.