33-fs Yb-fiber laser comb locked to Cs-atomic clock

Abstract

Despite the prevalence of fiber frequency combs around 1.5 μm, few fully stabilized frequency combs have been demonstrated around 1.0 μm, despite the generally superior performance of Yb-fiber lasers compared to Er-fiber lasers. Short pulses are to generate coherent supercontinuum using anomalous dispersion regime of microstructured fibers. Near-zero cavity dispersion is highly desirable for low-noise frequency comb performance. Here, we report a Yb-doped fiber laser that operates at net-zero group-velocity dispersion and produces pulses that can be compressed externally to 33-fs. The frequency comb generated by this system is repetition-and carrier-envelope-phase-locked to Cs atomic clocks. The laser oscillator design is based on a novel algorithmic methodology, which allows us to design cavities to meet specific requirements; in this case, there was the need to generate as short pulses as possible, while having several nJ of pulse energy and the cavity at strictly zero total dispersion.