Optical frequency combs can potentially provide an efficient light source for multi-terabit-per-second optical superchannels. However, as the bandwidth of these multi-wavelength light sources is increased, it can result in low per-line power. Optical amplifiers can be used to overcome power limitations, but the accompanying spontaneous optical noise can degrade performance in optical systems. To overcome this, we demonstrate wideband noise reduction for comb lines using a high-Q microring resonator whose resonances align with the comb lines, providing tight optical filtering of multiple combs lines at the same time. By distilling an optical frequency comb in this way, we are able to reduce the required comb line OSNR when these lines are used in a coherent optical communications system. Through performance tests on a 19.45-GHz-spaced comb generating 71 lines, using 18 Gbaud, 64-QAM sub-channels at a spectral efficiency of 10.6 b/s/Hz, we find that noise-corrupted comb lines can reduce the optical signal-to-noise ratio required for the comb by ∼9 dB when used as optical carriers at the transmitter side, and by ∼12 dB when used as a local oscillator at the receiver side. This demonstration provides a method to enable low power optical frequency combs to be able to support high bandwidth and high-capacity communications.

中文翻译：

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光超信道传输的频率梳状蒸馏

光频梳有可能为每秒数兆兆位的光学超级通道提供有效的光源。然而，随着这些多波长光源的带宽增加，它会导致每条线功率较低。光放大器可用于克服功率限制，但伴随的自发光噪声会降低光系统的性能。为了克服这个问题，我们使用高 Q 微环谐振器证明了梳状线的宽带降噪，该谐振器的谐振与梳状线对齐，同时为多个梳状线提供严格的光学滤波。通过以这种方式提取光频率梳，当这些线用于相干光通信系统时，我们能够降低所需的梳线 OSNR。通过对 19 的性能测试。45-GHz 间隔梳产生 71 条线，使用 18 Gbaud、64-QAM 子信道，频谱效率为 10.6 b/s/Hz，我们发现噪声损坏的梳线可以降低光信噪比当用作发射器侧的光载波时，梳子需要约 9 dB，当用作接收器侧的本地振荡器时，需要约 12 dB。该演示提供了一种使低功率光频梳能够支持高带宽和高容量通信的方法。