Facilities

Achieving Unprecedented Frequency Control in Miniature Lasers

Only a few decades ago, finding a particular channel on the radio or television meant dialing a knob by hand, making small tweaks and adjustments to hone in on the right signal. Of course, we now take such fine tuning for granted, simply pressing a button to achieve the same effect. This convenience is enabled by radio frequency synthesis, the generation of accurate signal frequencies from a single reference oscillator.

An optical-frequency synthesizer using integrated photonics

Daryl T. Spencer, Tara Drake, Travis C. Briles, Jordan Stone, Laura C. Sinclair, Connor Fredrick, Qing Li, Daron Westly, B. Robert Ilic, Aaron Bluestone, Nicolas Volet, Tin Komljenovic, Lin Chang, Seung Hoon Lee, Dong Yoon Oh, Myoung-Gyun Suh, Ki Youl Yang, Martin H. P. Pfeiffer, Tobias J. Kippenberg, Erik Norberg, Luke Theogarajan, Kerry Vahala, Nathan R. Newbury, Kartik Srinivasan, John E. Bowers, Scott A. Diddams & Scott B. Papp1,2