Dual-Frequency Laser Phase Locked at 100 GHz

Abstract

We report on the generation of low phase noise millimeter-wave signal at 100 GHz with a dual-frequency laser and a high-speed photodiode. The laser beatnote is phase-locked on the tenth harmonic of a 10 GHz synthesizer through a new photonic down-converter based on a phase modulator. The spectral purity of the millimeter-wave signal has been fully characterized: it is spurious free over a large bandwidth and its phase noise is limited by the synthesizer itself (-90 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz).