Optical frequency combs generated by four-wave mixing in optical fibers for astrophysical spectrometer calibration and metrology

Abstract

Optical frequency combs generated by multiple four-wave mixing in optical fibers are proposed for use as high precision frequency markers, calibration of astrophysical spectrometers and metrology. Possible schemes involve two optical frequency standards as input lasers, or one standard and a second laser phase-locked to it using a microwave reference oscillator. Use of highly nonlinear or photonic crystal fibers with very short lengths and small group velocity dispersion, combined with energy and momentum conservation required by the parametric generation, assures negligible phase mismatch between comb frequencies. In contrast to combs from mode-locked lasers or microcavities, the absence of a resonator allows large tuning of the frequency spacing from tens of gigahertz to beyond teraHertz. © American Institute of Physics.