New breakthrough could help improve telecommunication technology

Researchers have performed a study that can induce certain improvements to reduce the payload mass as well as to ensure the signal stability in communication and GPS-navigation satellites.

Researchers from the Moscow State University (MSU) together with their Swiss colleagues demonstrated that the primary source of noise in microresonator based optical frequency combs is related to non-linear harmonic generation mechanisms rather that by fundamental physical limitations and in principle reducible.

Michael Gorodetsky, co-author claimed that the study contained at least three important results: scientists found a technique to generate stable femtosecond (duration of the order of 10-15 seconds) pulses, optical combs and microwave signals.

Physicists used a microresonator to convert continuous laser emission into periodic pulses of extremely short duration

Gorodetsky said that in mode-locked femtosecond lasers complex optical devices, media and special mirrors are normally used. However they succeeded in obtaining stable pulses just in passive optical resonator using its own non-linearity

The short pulses generated in the microresonator are known as optical solitons (example tsunami wave).

He added that one can generate a single stable soliton circulating inside a microresonator and in the output optical fiber, one can obtain a periodic series of pulses with a period corresponding to a round trip time of the soliton.

Such pulses last for 100-200 femtoseconds, but the authors are sure that much shorter solitons are achievable.

The paper has been published in Nature Photonics.