All-fibre heterogeneously-integrated frequency comb generation using silicon core fibre

Originally developed for metrology, optical frequency combs are becoming increasingly pervasive in a wider range of research topics including optical communications, spectroscopy, and radio or microwave signal processing. However, application demands in these fields can be more challenging as they require compact sources with a high tolerance to temperature variations that are capable of delivering flat comb spectra, high power per tone, narrow linewidth and high optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR). To date, there has not been a frequency comb technology that is able to simultaneously achieve all these requirements. This work reports the generation of a flat, high power frequency comb in the telecom band using a 17-mm fully-integrated silicon core fibre (SCF) as a parametric mixer. Our all-fibre, cavity-free source combines the materials benefits of planar waveguide structures with the advantageous properties of fibre platforms to achieve a 30 nm bandwidth comb source containing 143 tones with <3 kHz linewidth, 12 dB flatness, and >30 dB OSNR over the entire spectral region. The unique combination of technical features offered by this SCF-based source opens a path towards a new class of high-performance frequency comb generators for communications and signal processing applications.

Kilometre-scale, kilowatt average power, single-mode laser delivery through hollow core fibre: overcoming nonlinear limits of glass fibre

High power laser delivery with near-diffraction-limited beam quality, widely used in industry for precision manufacturing, is typically limited to tens of metres distances by nonlinearity-induced spectral broadening inside the glass-core delivery fibres. Anti-resonant hollow-core fibres offer not only orders-of-magnitude lower non-linearity, but also loss and modal purity comparable to conventional beam-delivery fibres. Using a single-mode hollow-core nested anti-resonant nodeless fibre (NANF) with 0.74-dB/km loss, we demonstrate delivery of 1 kW of near-diffraction-limited continuous wave laser light over an unprecedented 1-km distance, with a total throughput efficiency of ~80%. From simulations, more than one order of magnitude further improvement in transmitted power or length should be possible in such air-filled fibres, and considerably more if the core is evacuated. This paves the way to multi-kilometre, kW-scale power delivery – not only for future manufacturing and subsurface drilling, but also for new scientific possibilities in sensing, particle acceleration and gravitational wave detection.