December 1, 1999 / Vol. 24, No.

23 / OPTICS LETTERS 1747

Broadband optical frequency comb generation with a

phase-modulated parametric oscillator
Scott A. Diddams, Long-Sheng Ma,* Jun Ye, and John L. Hall
JILA, University of Colorado, and National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0440

Received August 5, 1999

We introduce a novel broadband optical frequency comb generator consisting of a parametric oscillator with an
intracavity electro-optic phase modulator. The parametric oscillator is pumped by 532-nm light and produces
near-degenerate signal and idler f ields. The modulator generates a comb structure about both the signal
and the idler. Coupling between the two families of modes results in a dispersion-limited comb that spans
20 nm (5.3 THz). A signal-to-noise ratio of .30 dB in a 300-kHz bandwidth is observed in the beat frequency
between individual comb elements and a reference laser.  1999 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: 190.2620, 120.3940.

Traditional optical frequency combs are made by plac- parametric gain as provided by a phase-matched non-
ing an electro-optic modulator (EOM) inside a reso- linear crystal. Parametric gain has several unique
nant optical cavity.1,2 The light from an external laser, advantages: (1) The parametric process is intrinsi-
which can be stabilized at the hertz level to an atomic cally broadband and tunable, as it does not depend
or molecular transition, is coupled into the cavity. The on atomic or molecular resonances. (2) The paramet-
EOM is driven by a stable radio frequency (rf) or mi- rically generated photons are phase coherently linked
crowave oscillator at a frequency fm , which is an in- to the pump field. (3) The parametric process is quiet,
teger multiple of a cavity free spectral range fFSR . with the pump being the dominant noise source. How-
With moderate modulation index b, the EOM pri- ever, rather than simply providing parametric gain
marily shifts energy out of the carrier frequency into for a conventional comb generator, we have chosen to
two adjacent sidebands at frequencies f0 6 fm . These create a near-degenerate OPO in which an intracavity
sidebands pass back through the EOM and generate EOM generates a family of sidebands about the signal
secondary sidebands, which in turn generate their own and idler waves. This approach maintains the sim-
resonant sidebands. Because of limits on cavity fi- plicity of a device that has a single-frequency input
nesse 共F 兲 and b, this process gradually converges, and and multiple frequencies at the output. In what fol-
the power in the higher-order modes decreases expo- lows, we shall refer to this device and its output as an
nentially. To a good approximation, the output power OPO comb.
in the kth sideband is Pk ~ exp关2jkjp兾共bF 兲兴.1 The basic apparatus is shown in Fig. 1. Single-
When it is operated with known values of the fre- frequency light at 532 nm pumps the parametric
quency of the input light and fm , such an optical fre- oscillator, which employs 7.5 mm of type I MgO-doped
quency comb generator is a valuable precision link LiNbO3 as the gain medium 共T 苷 108 ±C兲. The curved
between unknown optical frequencies and known stan- face 共R 苷 10 mm兲 of this crystal is coated to be a high
dards separated by many terahertz.3,4 However, the ref lector at both 532 and 1064 nm. The remainder of
usable bandwidth of such a comb generator is typi- the cavity consists of two concave mirrors that have
cally restricted to ⬃5 THz by practical limits of the radii of curvature of 15 cm (M1) and 25 cm (M2), and a
modulation index and cavity finesse, in addition to f lat mirror (M3). Mirror M3, with high transmission
the dispersion of the cavity elements.5 One attempt at 532 nm, is added to the cavity to remove the green
to overcome bandwidth limitations involved the in- light trapped by the nonideal 30% ref lectivity of M1 at
sertion of dispersion-compensating prisms into the 532 nm. All mirrors are high ref lectors at 1064 nm,
comb generator cavity.6 In the 1.5-mm regime, Imai but leakage through M3 is used for diagnostics.
et al. broadened the comb spectra to 50 THz by am-
plif ication and four-wave mixing in dispersion-shifted
optical fiber.7 In this Letter we demonstrate a new
implementation of an optical frequency comb genera-
tor based on a phase-modulated optical parametric os-
cillator (OPO). As is shown below, the parametric
gain relaxes the restrictions of high cavity finesse and
modulation index while providing more f lexibility to
implement dispersion control.
The possibility of placing a source of conventional op-
tical gain (e.g., electrically or optically pumped solid- Fig. 1. Experimental apparatus: OPA, hemilithic MgO:
state media) inside a comb generator was proposed by LiNbO3 optical parametric amplifier; EOM, MgO:LiNbO3
Ho and Kahn.8 Our approach differs in that we use EOM. See text for details.

0146-9592/99/231747-03$15.00/0  1999 Optical Society of America

1748 OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 24, No. 23 / December 1, 1999

Mirror M2 is mounted upon a piezoelectric transducer 1064 nm, k0 00 苷 2745 fs2 兾cm and k0 00 苷 2390 fs2 兾cm for
for fine control of the cavity length, although active sta- the o and e waves, respectively. Using these values
bilization is not employed. A lumped-circuit resonant and the experimental parameters of Figs. 2(e)–2(f),
EOM,9 consisting of a 2 mm 3 2 mm 3 20 mm piece of one predicts a bandwidth of 5.4 THz, which agrees well
MgO-doped LiNbO3 , is placed at the position of the sec- with the experimental results. This analysis demon-
ond beam waist near mirror M2. The EOM is tuned to strates that, in pushing for broader bandwidth, it will
be resonant at the cavity frequency 共⬃350 MHz兲, and be crucial to minimize the cavity dispersion. The use
0.35 rad of phase modulation is obtained with 200 mW of dispersion-compensating prisms or mirrors is an ob-
of applied rf power. vious step in this direction, and the presence of gain
With no rf power applied to the EOM, the loaded, provides f lexibility in dealing with the anticipated
unpumped cavity of Fig. 1 has F 苷 150. The mini- losses. Another promising approach is the simple re-
mum pump threshold for near-degenerate parametric duction of cavity material by combining the parametric
oscillation is ⬃200 mW (measured between M1 and the amplif ier and the EOM in the same crystal.
gain crystal). At a pump power 2.53 above threshold, The action of the EOM to distribute the paramet-
the spectra of Fig. 2 were recorded with a grating- rically generated energy among the various modes
based optical spectrum analyzer. Figure 2(a) shows relaxes the normally stringent demands on the OPO
the near-degenerate oscillation of both the signal and cavity stability. Oscillation occurs on every mode over
the idler. Driving the EOM with 200 mW of rf power a significant bandwidth, and each mode is coupled
yields the spectrum of Fig. 2(b), where we see signifi- to its nearest neighbors via the EOM and to its con-
cant spectral broadening about the signal and idler. jugate partner by means of the parametric interac-
An increase of the cavity length by a fraction of the tion with the pump. Beyond output coupling, power
resonant wavelength acts to move the signal and idler is lost only in the wings of the spectrum, where disper-
branches of the spectrum together. When the two sively shifted modes are no longer efficiently coupled.
branches meet, as shown in Fig. 2(c), some interfer- The result is a form of mode-locked operation with
encelike oscillations in the spectrum are commonly steady-state, spectrally integrated output shown in
seen. However, the two branches then lock together Fig. 3. The unstable (mode-hopping) output of the
to form a single broadband comb spanning 18 nm, as free-running OPO with the EOM turned off is shown in
shown in Fig. 2(d). The device operates stably in this Fig. 3(a). However, when the EOM is turned on, the
fashion for hours, although the width of the spectrum stability improves dramatically, as shown in Fig. 3(b).
depends on variations in the cavity length. With a In this case fm was detuned ⬃50 Hz above fFSR . Fur-
doubling of the rf power to the modulator 共b 苷 0.5兲, ther improvements in the stability are seen when fm 苷
we obtain the spectra of Figs. 2(e) and 2(f); in these fFSR , as is the situation in Fig. 3(c). We note here
two figures we also point out the hysteresis in the be- that the detuning between fm and fFSR could be varied
havior of the system. Once the signal and the idler
branches of the spectrum have been locked together,
the cavity length can be decreased on a submicrometer
scale to spread the spectrum to greater widths. This
is the case in going from Fig. 2(e) to Fig. 2(f). A fur-
ther decrease in the cavity length results in the mar-
ginally stable spectrum of Fig. 2(f) again splitting into
two separate signal and idler branches.
Two of the most interesting features of the data of
Fig. 2(e) are the relatively small variations in power
across the spectrum and the sharp cutoff at the edges.
Assuming a conventional comb generator without gain
and using the values of b 苷 0.5 rad, F 苷 150, and
fm 苷 350 MHz, one predicts that the spectral power
will decrease by 520 dB per THz. This is in marked
contrast to the power variation of less than 15 dB seen
across the 5.3-THz spectrum of Fig. 2(e). Clearly, the
parametric gain plays a crucial role. Furthermore,
one could expect additional significant gains by em-
ploying shorter cavities and higher modulation fre-
quencies, thereby concentrating the energy of the
current 15,0001 modes into 10 or 50 times fewer
modes. Similar sharp spectral cutoffs, which are due
to dispersive material in the cavity, have been observed
and explained in conventional comb generators by
Fig. 2. (a) Near-degenerate parametric oscillation with
Kourogi et al.5 An estimate of the dispersion-limited the EOM off. ( b) Comb output with the EOM on, b 苷
bandwidth can be made with the expression Dfmax 苷 0.35 rad. (c), (d) Comb output for two successively longer
关4b兾共Lk0 00 p 2 兲兴1/2 , where k0 00 苷 d2 k兾dv 2 evaluated at cavity lengths. (e), (f ) Comb output with b 苷 0.5 rad.
the center comb frequency and L is the length of The cavity length was decreased ⬃40 nm in going from (e)
the intracavity material. For MgO:LiNbO3 at l0 苷 to (f ). Resolution bandwidth is 0.5 nm.
 December 1, 1999 / Vol. 24, No. 23 / OPTICS LETTERS 1749

megahertz in many tens of milliseconds, which we

believe is largely the result of the frequency jitter on
the OPO-comb pump.
An interesting question is whether the current OPO
comb operates with an even or an odd number of
modes. In the latter case one would find a mode
at exact degeneracy 共 fp 兾2兲, whereas in the former
case the modes would be split evenly about the fre-
quency fp 兾2. This question will need to be addressed
if the full potential of the device is to be realized—
for example, direct connection of every element of the
comb to fp and the well-known iodine transition at
532 nm.4 Nonetheless, with precise knowledge of fm
the current device is already appropriate for mea-
suring across large frequency gaps. In this regard,
the spectroscopy of helium is an interesting field of
Fig. 3. Spectrally integrated output of the comb with study. A recent determination of the fine-structure
(a) EOM off, ( b) EOM on but fm detuned slightly above fFSR , splitting on the 23 S1 ! 23 PJ transition has prompted
and (c) EOM on with fm 苷 fFSR . The standard deviations
of the intensity f luctuations in these three cases are 23%, the further consideration of helium as a valuable sys-
9%, and 4% of the mean intensity, respectively. Detection tem for measuring fundamental constants and test-
bandwidth, ⬃1 MHz. ing QED.10 With an increase in bandwidth, the OPO
comb could prove valuable in this endeavor through
the measurement of the absolute frequency of this
1083-nm transition by comparison with the 532–
1064-nm standard.
The authors are grateful for the valuable insights
and assistance of M. Raymer and A. Zozulya. Funding
for this research was provided by the National Science
Foundation and the National Institute of Standards
and Technology, and S. A. Diddams is thankful for the
support of the National Research Council. S. A. Did-
dams’s e-mail address is sdiddams@[Link].
*Permanent address, Laboratory for Quantum Op-
Fig. 4. (a) rf spectrum of the heterodyne signal between tics, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
the OPO comb and a stable reference laser. The peaks
at 350 and 700 MHz are the OPO-comb harmonics; the
two smaller peaks are the heterodyne signal. Resolution References
bandwidth, 300 kHz. ( b) Detailed view of the signal of
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