March 2021
Spotlight Summary by Nathan Newbury
FOKUS II—Space flight of a compact and vacuum compatible dual frequency comb system
Menlo successfully operated dual self-referenced frequency combs in sub-orbital flight on a sounding rocket, as reported in this paper. This work is a significant step towards bringing the optical precision of frequency combs to future satellite missions for ultra-precise worldwide time distribution, fundamental tests of relativity, searches for dark matter, distributed sensing and a host of other applications. Menlo is the pioneer of commercial fiber-laser frequency combs. Fiber-based combs remain the most ubiquitous frequency combs worldwide and should be suited to space-based operation. Menlo had previously developed FOKUS I, the first fiber frequency comb launched on a sounding rocket. Here, they describe FOKUS II where they doubled the number of combs while reducing the size and weight by a full factor of two, and the power by almost a factor of two. By locking both combs to the same iodine clock, developed by collaborators from Humboldt-University Berlin, they remove ambiguities associated with mode number and provide redundancy. Furthermore, the frequency combs successfully acquired lock automatically within a minute and a half of reaching sub-orbit. One frequency comb even re-acquired lock during the parachute re-entry. The stability was limited by the onboard reference clock to the 10-11 level.
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Article Information
FOKUS II—Space flight of a compact and vacuum compatible dual frequency comb system
Benjamin J. Pröbster, Matthias Lezius, Olaf Mandel, Claus Braxmaier, and Ronald Holzwarth
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 38(3) 932-939 (2021) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF