Precise and stable synchronization between an optical frequency comb (femtosecond mode-locked laser oscillator or microresonator-based comb) and a microwave oscillator is important for various fields including telecommunication, radio astronomy, metrology, and ultrafast X-ray and electron science. Timing detection and synchronization using electro-optic sampling with an interferometer has been actively used for low-noise microwave generation, long-distance timing transfer, comb stabilization, time-of-flight sensing, and laser-microwave synchronization for ultrafast science facilities. Despite its outstanding performance, there has been a discrepancy in synchronization performance of more than 10 dB between the projected shot-noise-limited noise floor and the measured residual noise floor. In this work, we demonstrate the shot-noise-limited performance of an electro-optic timing detector-based comb-microwave synchronization, which enabled an unprecedented residual phase noise floor of -174.5dBc/Hz at 8 GHz carrier frequency (i.e., 53zs/Hz1/2 timing noise floor), integrated rms timing jitter of 88 as (1Hzto1MHz), rms timing drift of 319 as over 12 h, and frequency instability of 3.6×10-20 over 10,000 s averaging time. We identified that bandpass filtering of the microwave signal and optical pulse repetition-rate multiplication are critical for achieving this performance.

We investigate optical and electrical behaviors of a graphene saturable absorber (SA) and mode-locking performance of a graphene-SA-based mode-locked Er fiber laser in gamma-ray radiation. When irradiated up to 4.8 kGy at ～100 Gy/hr dose rate, the overall nonlinear transmittance in transverse electric mode was increased, while maintaining modulation depth to >10%. The corresponding polarization-dependent loss was reduced at a 1.2-dB/kGy rate. In the electrical properties, the charge carrier mobility was reduced, and the Dirac voltage shift was increased to positive under gamma-ray radiation. The radiation-induced optical and electrical changes turned out to be almost recovered after a few days. In addition, we confirmed that the graphene-SA-based laser showed stable CW mode-locking operation while the inserted graphene SA was irradiated for 2-kGy at a 45-Gy/hr dose rate, which corresponds to >40 years of operation in low Earth orbit satellites. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first evaluation of graphene SAs and graphene-SA-based mode-locked lasers in gamma-ray radiation, and the measured results confirm the high potential of graphene SAs and graphene-SA-based lasers in various outer-space environments as well as other radiation environments, including particle accelerators and radiation-based medical instruments.

We propose and demonstrate an agile X-band signal synthesizer with ultralow phase noise based on all-fiber-photonic techniques for radar applications. It shows phase noise of ?145dBc/Hz (?152dBc/Hz) at 10 kHz (100 kHz) offset frequency for 10 GHz carrier frequency with integrated RMS timing jitter between 7.6 and 9.1 fs (integration bandwidth: 10 Hz–10 MHz) for frequencies from 9 to 11 GHz. Its frequency switching time is evaluated to be 135 ns with a 135 pHz frequency tuning resolution. In addition, the X-band linear-frequency-modulated signal generated by the proposed synthesizer shows a good pulse compression ratio approximating the theoretical value. In addition to the ultrastable X-band signals, the proposed synthesizer can also provide 0–1 GHz ultralow-jitter clocks for analog-to-digital converters (ADC) and digital-to-analog converters (DAC) in radar systems and ultralow-jitter optical pulse trains for photonic ADC in photonic radar systems. The proposed X-band synthesizer shows great performance in phase stability, switching speed, and modulation capability with robustness and potential low cost, which is enabled by an all-fiber-photonics platform and can be a compelling technology suitable for future X-band radars.