Carrier-Envelope Phase Control of Femtosecond Mode-Locked Lasers
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R ESEARCH A RTICLES cavity. Active control of the relative carrier- envelope phase prepares a stable pulse-to- Carrier-Envelope Phase Control pulse phase relation, as presented below, and will dramatically impact extreme nonlinear of Femtosecond Mode-Locked optics. Although it may be natural to think about Lasers and Direct Optical the carrier-envelope phase in the time do- main, it is also apparent in a high-resolution measurement of the frequency spectrum. The Frequency Synthesis output spectrum of a mode-locked laser con- David J. Jones,1* Scott A. Diddams,1* Jinendra K. Ranka,2 sists of a comb of optical frequencies sepa- rated by the repetition rate. However, the Andrew Stentz,2 Robert S. Windeler,2 1 1 comb frequencies are not necessarily integer John L. Hall, * Steven T. Cundiff *† multiples of the repetition rate; they may also have an offset (Fig. 1B). This offset is due to We stabilized the carrier-envelope phase of the pulses emitted by a femto- the difference between the group and phase second mode-locked laser by using the powerful tools of frequency-domain velocities. Control of the carrier-envelope laser stabilization. We confirmed control of the pulse-to-pulse carrier-envelope phase is equivalent to control of the absolute phase using temporal cross correlation. This phase stabilization locks the ab- optical frequencies of the comb, and vice solute frequencies emitted by the laser, which we used to perform absolute versa. This means that the same control of the optical frequency measurements that were directly referenced to a stable carrier-envelope phase will also result in a microwave clock. revolutionary technique for optical frequency metrology that directly connects the micro- Progress in femtosecond pulse generation has velocities differ inside the laser cavity (Fig. wave cesium frequency standard to the opti- made it possible to generate optical pulses that 1A). To date, techniques of phase control of cal frequency domain with a single laser (14). are only a few cycles in duration (1–4). This femtosecond pulses have employed time do- We used a self-referencing technique to has resulted in rapidly growing interest in con- main methods (5). However, these techniques control the absolute frequencies of the optical trolling the phase of the underlying carrier wave have not used active feedback, and rapid comb generated by a mode-locked laser. with respect to the envelope (1, 5–7). The dephasing occurs because of pulse energy Through the relation between time and fre- absolute carrier phase is normally not important fluctuations and other perturbations inside the quency described below, this method also in optics; however, for such ultrashort pulses, it can have physical consequences (6, 8). Concur- rently, mode-locked lasers, which generate a train of ultrashort pulses, have become an im- portant tool in precision optical frequency mea- surement (9–14). There is a close connection between these two apparently disparate topics. We exploited this connection to develop a fre- quency domain technique that stabilizes the carrier phase with respect to the pulse envelope. Using the same technique, we performed abso- lute optical frequency measurements using a single mode-locked laser with the only input being a stable microwave clock. Mode-locked lasers generate a repetitive train of ultrashort optical pulses by fixing the relative phases of all of the lasing longitudi- nal modes (15). Current mode-locking tech- niques are effective over such a large band- width that the resulting pulses can have a duration of 6 fs or shorter, i.e., approximately two optical cycles (2–4). With such ultra- short pulses, the relative phase between peak of the pulse envelope and the underlying electric-field carrier wave becomes relevant. In general, this phase is not constant from pulse to pulse because the group and phase Fig. 1. Time-frequency correspondence and relation between ⌬ and ␦.(A) In the time domain, the 1JILA, University of Colorado and National Institute of relative phase between the carrier (solid) and the envelope (dotted) evolves from pulse to pulse by Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO 80309Ð0440, ⌬ ϭ⌬ ϩ the amount . Generally, the absolute phase is given by (t/ ) 0, where 0 is an USA. 2Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Murray unknown overall constant phase. (B) In the frequency domain, the elements of the frequency comb Hill, NJ 07733, USA. of a mode-locked pulse train are spaced by f . The entire comb (solid) is offset from integer rep␦ϭ⌬ ␦ *These authors contributed equally to this work. multiples (dotted) of frep by an offset frequency f rep/2 . Without active stabilization, is †To whom correspondence should be addressed. E- a dynamic quantity, which is sensitive to perturbation of the laser. Hence, ⌬ changes in a mail: [email protected] nondeterministic manner from pulse to pulse in an unstabilized laser. www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 288 28 APRIL 2000 635 R ESEARCH A RTICLES serves to stabilize the carrier phase with re- the frequency domain offset ␦ enabled us to use frequency doubling a single-frequency laser spect to the envelope. This phase stabilization the powerful techniques developed for stabili- and then measuring the difference between was verified with temporal cross correlation. zation of single-frequency lasers. It is possible the fundamental and second harmonic by The utility of this method for absolute optical to lock the position of the frequency comb to a subdividing it. The subdivision may be done frequency metrology was demonstrated by known optical frequency, such as that of a by optical bisection (20, 21), comb genera- measuring the frequency of a stable single- single-frequency laser (12). However, employ- tion (22), or, most typically, a combination of frequency laser directly from a microwave ing this approach to determine and lock ␦ is the two (9, 10, 17, 23). The goal of the clock. problematic because the optical frequencies are subdivision is finally to obtain a frequency Time versus frequency. The connection Ͼ106 times the repetition rate. In addition, it interval small enough that it can be directly between the pulse-to-pulse carrier-envelope introduces the complication of a highly stabi- compared to the cesium frequency. A recent phase shift and the absolute frequency spec- lized single-frequency laser, not to mention the series of landmark experiments by Ha¨nsch trum can be understood by considering how uncertainty in the single-frequency continuous and co-workers demonstrated that mode- the spectrum is built up by a temporal train of wave (CW) laser itself. locked lasers are the preferred implementa- pulses (7, 9, 14). It is easily shown with A more elegant approach is to use a self- tion of optical comb generators (9–11). We Fourier transforms that a shift in time corre- referencing technique, which is based on recently performed absolute frequency mea- sponds to a phase shift that is linear with comparing the frequency of comb lines on the surements using only the comb generated by frequency; that is, the phase at angular fre- low-frequency side of the optical spectrum to a mode-locked laser (13). The laser and mi- quency is t for a time shift of t. Within a those on the high-frequency side that have crostructure fiber were similar to those used narrow spectral bandwidth, successive pulses approximately twice the frequency. Let the here, although the technique is quite different interfere, but a signal will be observed only at frequency of comb line n, which is on the red in that the laser comb was not stabilized in ϭ frequencies where they add constructively, side of the spectrum, have a frequency fn position but rather only used to divide down ϩ␦ i.e., have a phase shift of 2n . For a pulse nfrep . The comb line corresponding to 2n, an optical frequency interval. train with time between pulses, these fre- which will be the blue side of the spectrum, The self-referencing technique described ϭ ϭ ϭ ϩ␦ quencies are fn n/ nfrep, where n is an will have frequency f2n 2nfrep .We here is a dramatic step beyond these previous ϭ ␦ integer and frep 1/ is the repetition fre- obtain by frequency doubling fn and then techniques because it uses only a single ϭ␦ quency of the pulse train. Thus, we recover taking the difference 2fn – f2n . To imple- mode-locked laser and does not need any the fact that the frequency spectrum consists ment the technique in a simple way, we need stabilized single-frequency lasers. We think of a comb of frequencies spaced by the rep- an optical spectrum that spans a factor of 2 in that it will make precision absolute optical etition rate of the pulse train. If we include frequency, known as an optical octave. This frequency metrology into an easily accessible the pulse-to-pulse phase shift ⌬, then the is obtained by spectrally broadening the laser laboratory tool. phase difference between successive pulses at pulse in air-silica microstructure fiber (16). Laser and stabilization. The heart of the angular frequency is now Ϫ⌬. Again, Full experimental detail is given below. experiment is a titanium-doped sapphire for constructive interference, this phase dif- Optical frequency metrology tech- (Ti:S) laser (shown in Fig. 2) that is pumped ference is set equal to 2n, which shows that niques. Optical frequencies are preferred for with a single-frequency, frequency-doubled ϭ ϩ␦ now the frequencies are fn nfrep , where the precision measurements that test funda- Nd:YVO4 laser operating at 532 nm. The Ti:S ␦ϭ⌬ 2 frep. Hence, a pulse-to-pulse phase mental physical theories (17, 18). In part, this laser generates a 90-MHz pulse train with pulse shift between the carrier and envelope corre- preference is associated with the very narrow widths as short as 10 fs using Kerr lens mode- sponds to an offset of the frequency comb fractional linewidths displayed by optical res- locking (2).