An All-Polarization-Maintaining Multi-Branch Optical Frequency Comb for Highly Sensitive Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy *
Kai Ning1,2, Lei Hou1,3, Song-Tao Fan1,2, Lu-Lu Yan1,2, Yan-Yan Zhang1,2, Bing-Jie Rao1,2, Xiao-Fei Zhang1,2, Shou-Gang Zhang1,2, Hai-Feng Jiang1,2**
1Key Laboratory of Time and Frequency Primary Standards, National Time Service Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710600, China 2School of Astronomy and Space Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China 3Institute of Photonics and Photon-Technology, Northwest University, Xi'an 710069, China
Abstract：We demonstrate a multi-branch all polarization-maintaining Er:fiber frequency comb with five application ports for precise measurement of atomic/molecular transition frequencies in the near-infrared region. A fully stabilized Er:fiber frequency comb with a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror is achieved. The in-loop relative instability of stabilized carrier-envelope-offset frequency is $5.6\times 10^{-18}$ at 1 s integration time, while that of the repetition rate is well below $1.8\times 10^{-12}$ limited by the measurement noise floor of the commercial frequency counter. Five application ports are individually optimized for applications with different wavelengths (1064 nm, 1083 nm, 1380 nm, 1637 nm and 1750 nm). The beat note between the optical frequency comb and continuous laser exhibits the signal-to-noise ratio of at least 30 dB at a resolution bandwidth of 100 kHz. The in-loop frequency instability of the comb is evaluated to be good enough for measurement of rotation-resolved transitions of molecules below 1 kHz resolution.
2020, Vol. 37 
