Integrated optical frequency division for microwave and mmWave generation

Shuman Sun; Beichen Wang; Kaikai Liu; Mark W Harrington; Fatemehsadat Tabatabaei; Ruxuan Liu; Jiawei Wang; Samin Hanifi; Jesse S Morgan; Mandana Jahanbozorgi; Zijiao Yang; Steven M Bowers; Paul A Morton; Karl D Nelson; Andreas Beling; Daniel J Blumenthal; Xu Yi

doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07057-0

Integrated optical frequency division for microwave and mmWave generation

Nature. 2024 Mar;627(8004):540-545. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07057-0. Epub 2024 Mar 6.

Authors

Shuman Sun^#¹, Beichen Wang^#¹, Kaikai Liu², Mark W Harrington², Fatemehsadat Tabatabaei¹, Ruxuan Liu¹, Jiawei Wang², Samin Hanifi¹, Jesse S Morgan¹, Mandana Jahanbozorgi¹, Zijiao Yang^{1

3}, Steven M Bowers¹, Paul A Morton⁴, Karl D Nelson⁵, Andreas Beling¹, Daniel J Blumenthal⁶, Xu Yi^{7

8}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
² Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
³ Department of Physics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
⁴ Morton Photonics, Palm Bay, Florida, USA.
⁵ Honeywell Aerospace Technologies, Plymouth, MN, USA.
⁶ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA. danb@ucsb.edu.
⁷ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA. yi@virginia.edu.
⁸ Department of Physics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA. yi@virginia.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

The generation of ultra-low-noise microwave and mmWave in miniaturized, chip-based platforms can transform communication, radar and sensing systems^1-3. Optical frequency division that leverages optical references and optical frequency combs has emerged as a powerful technique to generate microwaves with superior spectral purity than any other approaches^4-7. Here we demonstrate a miniaturized optical frequency division system that can potentially transfer the approach to a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor-compatible integrated photonic platform. Phase stability is provided by a large mode volume, planar-waveguide-based optical reference coil cavity^8,9 and is divided down from optical to mmWave frequency by using soliton microcombs generated in a waveguide-coupled microresonator^10-12. Besides achieving record-low phase noise for integrated photonic mmWave oscillators, these devices can be heterogeneously integrated with semiconductor lasers, amplifiers and photodiodes, holding the potential of large-volume, low-cost manufacturing for fundamental and mass-market applications¹³.