Design and experimental simulation for an optical frequency transfer system on silicon photonic platform

An optical frequency transfer system was designed aiming at silicon photonics integration. To evaluate the expected performance before fabricating the photonic integrated circuits, an experimental simulator was developed by employing alternative optics that were replaceable with the corresponding photonic functions. In particular, a carrier-suppressed single-sideband Mach–Zehnder modulator was first exploited as a double-pass phase-compensation actuator in fiber-induced noise cancellation. Experimental simulation in a 90 km length fiber network demonstrated an instability of 2 × 10−18 for the transmitted optical frequency and uninterrupted operations over 24 h. By adopting the design established here, a chip-scale and highly accurate optical frequency transfer system is feasible for numerous applications.