National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) This page is a page of the former research institute. We stopped updating on March 31.2001.
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Research (6)

Research on the technology of optical phase locking and frequency division (STA Coordinated Joint Research:'93-'97)

    The major defects of the conventional frequency chain are that it usually needs a high power infra-red gaslaser, and the frequency measureable range is largely limited by the combination and tunability of intermediate lasers. With the view of building a "new generation" frequency chain which is based on the optical frequency division technique and also composed of only solid state components, development of opticalparametric oscillators (cw-OPO) and optical frequency comb generators (OFCG) is being carried out. We expect to realize a frequency chain as accurate as the standard by utilizing Cs frequency standard to modulate OFCGs. At present, the following results are achieved.

    (a) A cw-OPO of which power threshold was able to lower to as little as 9mw (lowest in the world) showed a stable operation for hours. Phase locked operation was also confirmed18).
    (b) In view of a small chain sytem, OFCG of micro strip line type has been manufactured anda sufficient performance is obtained for a trial instrument.
    (c) Frequency shift which may be caused by nonlinear effect (dispersion effect) in a cw-OPO and an OFCG has been investigated, and no significant shift has been observed in the order 10-13 and 10-12, respectively19)20).