Phase noise in the photodetection of ultrashort optical pulses

Taylor, Jennifer A.; Quinlan, F.; Hati, Archita; Nelson, Craig W.; Diddams, Scott A.; Datta, Shubhashish; Joshi, Abhay

doi:10.1109/freq.2010.5556176

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(22 reference statements)

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“…The desired microwave frequency, 10 GHz in our case, is electrically filtered and used as a frequency source. With illumination as just described, we obtain maximum 10 GHz signal powers near saturation of approximately -25 dBm at 1 mA for PD1, -13 dBm at 5 mA for PD2 and -6 dBm at 6 mA for PD3 [18]. Increasing the photocurrent above these values results in minimal increase of the achievable 10 GHz power, or even a decrease in some cases.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…From Figure 4, the "worst case" AM-to-PM values for PD1 and PD2 are 2.3 rad and 0.6 rad, respectively, at 4 mA. Using these values and the RIN of Figure 9a, we calculated the anticipated phase noise (Figure 9b) [18].…”

Section: Results and Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The implication of these measurements is that reduction in photodiode nonlinearity indeed results in reduced AM-to-PM conversion. We note that low AM-to-PM at the largest photocurrent is especially desirable from the point of view of minimizing the shot-noise floor of generated microwave signals [18], [33]. In this regard, α for PD3 is below 0.4 rad up to a photocurrent of nearly 8 mA.…”

Section: A Phase Bridgementioning

confidence: 93%

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Characterization of Power-to-Phase Conversion in High-Speed P-I-N Photodiodes

et al. 2011

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Fluctuations of the optical power incident on a photodiode can be converted into 12 phase fluctuations of the resulting electronic signal due to nonlinear saturation in the 13 semiconductor. This impacts overall timing stability (phase noise) of microwave signals 14 generated from a photodetected optical pulse train. In this paper, we describe and utilize 15 techniques to characterize this conversion of amplitude noise to phase noise for several high-16 speed (>10 GHz) InGaAs P-I-N photodiodes operated at 900 nm. We focus on the impact of 17 this effect on the photonic generation of low phase noise 10 GHz microwave signals and show 18 that a combination of low laser amplitude noise, appropriate photodiode design, and optimum 19 average photocurrent is required to achieve phase noise at or below -100 dBc/Hz at 1 Hz offset 20 a 10 GHz carrier. In some photodiodes we find specific photocurrents where the power-to-21 phase conversion factor is observed to go to zero. 22 Index Terms: frequency combs, microwave photonics, photodetectors 23 24 30 emerging microwave photonics applications such as radio over fiber, phased-array radars [1], [2], 31 arbitrary waveform generation [3], [4], radio astronomy [5], large-scale free-electron lasers [6], [7], 32 and optical analog-to-digital conversion [8]. 33Our particular interest is the generation of ultra-low phase noise microwave tones and 34 waveforms using a frequency-stabilized mode-locked laser comb [6], [7], [9]- [12]. For this 35 application, we employ photodetection to convert the optical signals to electronic signals for use in 36 and analysis with standard electronic devices. While additional noise contributions from 37 components in the system can have a significant effect on the overall timing precision of these 38 ultra-low noise signals, excess noise in the photodetection process cannot be neglected. Besides 39 the fundamental shot noise of the photocurrent, the conversion of laser amplitude noise into 40 electronic phase noise during photodetection has been previously identified as a limiting noise

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 72%

Section: Results and Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Phase Bridgementioning

confidence: 93%

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Characterization of Power-to-Phase Conversion in High-Speed P-I-N Photodiodes

et al. 2011

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“…This timing jitter level is well below the sensitivity of the traditional microwave method, which is based on direct, high-speed detection of the pulse trains and subsequent amplification and frequency mixing of a harmonic of the detected repetition rates to baseband for spectral noise analysis. Even if careful attention is paid to the design of the photodetector and the subsequent mixing processes, this method suffers from nonlinearityinduced phase noise, limiting its sensitivity typically to a few femtoseconds integrated jitter [6].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Timing jitter characterization of mode-locked lasers with <1 zs/√Hz resolution using a simple optical heterodyne technique

Hou¹,

Lee²,

Yang³

et al. 2015

Opt. Lett.

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Timing jitter characterization of free-running mode-locked lasers with an unprecedented resolution is demonstrated using an optical heterodyne technique. A highly sensitive timing jitter phase-discrimination signal with low-parasitic-amplitude sensitivity is achieved. Analytical and numerical methods are used to analyze the properties of the discrimination signal. For an experimental demonstration, we measure the timing jitter between two loosely synchronized mode-locked Er:Yb:glass lasers with 500-MHz fundamental repetition rates. The timing jitter-detection noise floor for a single mode-locked laser reaches 2.8×10(-13) fs(2)/Hz (∼530 ys/√Hz), and the integrated timing jitter is 16.3 as from 10 kHz to the Nyquist frequency (250 MHz). These results show that this approach can be a simpler alternative to the well-established balanced optical cross-correlation technique.

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“…In most situations, distortions caused by PD are not under consideration since the PD shows un-conspicuous nonlinearity in the non-saturated linear range. However, PD is easy to get saturated and causes nonlinearity when the incident beam is a pulsed light source because the peak power of the pulsed light source is much higher than that of the CW light source under the same average optical power [12]. It has been demonstrated that the phase of the directly detected electrical signal changes as a function of the applied optical energy for the un-modulated optical pulse trains due to the PD saturation effect [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Amplitude Modulation to Phase Modulation Conversion in Photonic Bandpass Sampling Link

et al. 2021

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The photonic bandpass sampling has been proved to be potential in multi-carrier communication, frequency-agile coherent radar, compressive sensing, etc. It supports the direct down-conversion of multi-carrier signals using a low-speed analog-to-digital converter (ADC). We observed the distortion resulted from amplitude-modulation to phase-modulation (AM-PM) conversion caused by the saturated photo-detector in the photonic bandpass sampling link. The nonlinearity caused by the AM-PM conversion is theoretically analyzed, which is the 2 nd harmonic distortion and has a phase difference of 90 degrees with the fundamental signal. Due to the AM-PM conversion, the 2 nd harmonic distortion occurs even the Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) is quadrature biased in the photonic bandpass sampling link. Two comparative experiments were conducted to test the nonlinearity. When the MZM works at different bias points, the phase of the 2 nd harmonic distortion will be different. In addition, we also compared the differences in 2 nd harmonic distortion between standard continuous wave photonic links and photonic bandpass sampling links.

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Phase noise in the photodetection of ultrashort optical pulses

Cited by 5 publications

References 16 publications

Characterization of Power-to-Phase Conversion in High-Speed P-I-N Photodiodes

Characterization of Power-to-Phase Conversion in High-Speed P-I-N Photodiodes

Timing jitter characterization of mode-locked lasers with <1 zs/√Hz resolution using a simple optical heterodyne technique

Amplitude Modulation to Phase Modulation Conversion in Photonic Bandpass Sampling Link

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