RESUMEN
A single tunable filter simplifies complexity, reduces insertion loss, and minimizes size compared to frequency switchable filter banks commonly used for radio frequency (RF) band selection. Magnetostatic wave (MSW) filters stand out for their wide, continuous frequency tuning and high-quality factor. However, MSW filters employing electromagnets for tuning consume excessive power and space, unsuitable for consumer wireless applications. Here, we demonstrate miniature and high selectivity MSW tunable filters with zero static power consumption, occupying less than 2 cc. The center frequency is continuously tunable from 3.4 GHz to 11.1 GHz via current pulses of sub-millisecond duration applied to a small and nonvolatile magnetic bias assembly. This assembly is limited in the area over which it can achieve a large and uniform magnetic field, necessitating filters realized from small resonant cavities micromachined in thin films of Yttrium Iron Garnet. Filter insertion loss of 3.2 dB to 5.1 dB and out-of-band third order input intercept point greater than 41 dBm are achieved. The filter's broad frequency range, compact size, low insertion loss, high out-of-band linearity, and zero static power consumption are essential for protecting RF transceivers from interference, thus facilitating their use in mobile applications like IoT and 6 G networks.
RESUMEN
Stable lasers play a significant role in precision optical systems where an electro-optic laser frequency stabilization system, such as the Pound-Drever-Hall technique, measures laser frequency and actively stabilizes it by comparing it to a frequency reference. Despite their excellent performance, there has been a trade-off between complexity, scalability, and noise measurement sensitivity. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a modulation-free laser stabilization method using an integrated cavity-coupled Mach-Zehnder interferometer as a frequency noise discriminator. The proposed architecture maintains the sensitivity of the Pound-Drever-Hall architecture without the need for any modulation. This significantly simplifies the architecture and makes miniaturization into an integrated photonic platform easier. The implemented chip suppresses the frequency noise of a semiconductor laser by 4 orders-of-magnitude using an on-chip silicon microresonator with a quality factor of 2.5 × 106. The implemented passive photonic chip occupies an area of 0.456 mm2 and is integrated on AIM Photonics 100 nm silicon-on-insulator process.
RESUMEN
Low noise stable lasers have far-reaching applications in spectroscopy, communication, metrology and basic science. The Pound-Drever-Hall laser stabilization technique is widely used to stabilize different types of lasers in these areas. Here we report the demonstration of an integrated Pound-Drever-Hall system that can stabilize a low-cost laser to realize a compact inexpensive light source, which can ultimately impact many fields of science and engineering. We present an integrated architecture utilizing an electronically reconfigurable Mach-Zehnder interferometer as the frequency reference to reduce the frequency noise of semiconductor lasers by more than 25 dB and the relative Allan deviation by more than 12 times at 200 µs averaging time. Compared to the bench-top implementations, the integrated Pound-Drever-Hall system has significantly lower power consumption, less sensitivity to the environmental fluctuations and occupies an area of only 2.38 mm2. The photonic and electronic devices are integrated on a standard 180 nm complementary metal-oxide semiconductor silicon-on-insulator process.
