We here discuss recent progress on astronomical optical frequency comb generation at innoFSPEC-Potsdam. Two different platforms (and approaches) are numerically and experimentally investigated targeting medium and low resolution spectrographs at astronomical facilities in which innoFSPEC is currently involved. In the first approach, a frequency comb is generated by propagating two lasers through three nonlinear stages – the first two stages serve for the generation of low-noise ultra-short pulses, while the final stage is a low-dispersion highly-nonlinear fibre where the pulses undergo strong spectral broadening. In our approach, the wavelength of one of the lasers can be tuned allowing the comb line spacing being continuously varied during the calibration procedure – this tuning capability is expected to improve the calibration accuracy since the CCD detector response can be fully scanned. The input power, the dispersion, the nonlinear coefficient, and fibre lengths in the nonlinear stages are defined and optimized by solving the Generalized Nonlinear Schrodinger Equation. Experimentally, we generate the 250GHz line-spacing frequency comb using two narrow linewidth lasers that are adiabatically compressed in a standard fibre first and then in a double-clad Er/Yb doped fibre. The spectral broadening finally takes place in a highly nonlinear fibre resulting in an astro-comb with 250 calibration lines (covering a bandwidth of 500 nm) with good spectral equalization. In the second approach, we aim to generate optical frequency combs in dispersion-optimized silicon nitride ring resonators. A technique for lowering and flattening the chromatic dispersion in silicon nitride waveguides with silica cladding is proposed and demonstrated. By minimizing the waveguide dispersion in the resonator two goals are targeted: enhancing the phase matching for non-linear interactions and producing equally spaced resonances. For this purpose, instead of one cladding layer our design incorporates two layers with appropriate thicknesses. We demonstrate a nearly zero dispersion (with +/- 4 ps/nm-km variation) over the spectral region from 1.4 to 2.3 microns. The techniques reported here should open new avenues for the generation of compact astronomical frequency comb sources on a chip or in nonlinear fibres.

Date Published: 13 September 2012
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 8450, Modern Technologies in Space- and Ground-based Telescopes and Instrumentation II, 84501H (13 September 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.925535

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8450:
Modern Technologies in Space- and Ground-based Telescopes and Instrumentation II
Ramón Navarro; Colin R. Cunningham; Eric Prieto, Editor(s)