Cooling of an integrated Brillouin laser below the thermal limit
Abstract
Photonically integrated resonators are promising as a platform for enabling ultranarrow linewidth lasers in a compact form factor. Owing to their small size, these integrated resonators suffer from thermal noise that limits the frequency stability of the optical mode to ∼100 kHz. Here, we demonstrate an integrated stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) laser based on a large mode-volume annulus resonator that realizes an ultranarrow thermal-noise-limited linewidth of 270 Hz. In practice, yet narrower linewidths are required before integrated lasers can be truly useful for applications such as optical atomic clocks, quantum computing, gravitational wave detection, and precision spectroscopy. To this end, we employ a thermorefractive noise suppression technique utilizing an auxiliary laser to reduce our SBS laser linewidth to 70 Hz. This demonstration showcases the possibility of stabilizing the thermal motion of even the narrowest linewidth chip lasers to below 100 Hz, thereby opening the door to making integrated microresonators practical for the most demanding future scientific endeavors.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jun 07, 2022
- Source ID
- 10.1364/oe.451622
Entities
People
- Alexander Medeiros
- Danielle Braje
- Dave Kharas
- Gavin N. West
- P Juodawlkis
- Robert Mcconnell
- Ryan Maxson
- William Loh
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Office Of The Under Secretary Of Defense