Self-stabilization of microcombs

Optical frequency combs form phase-locked spectral lines arranged on an equidistant grid fully defined by two degrees of freedom, i.e., the repetition rate and frequency offset.

Stabilizing these parameters to a common frequency reference results in a coherent frequency ruler, central for modern precision metrology.

However, extending this level of stability to chip-scale microcombs remains an outstanding challenge.

Here, we demonstrate a self-stabilizing mechanism based on self-injection locking of a selected comb line via an external feedback loop.

This process establishes a second anchor point in addition to the pump, thereby constraining the comb's frequency noise dynamics.

We show that, with an appropriate choice between pump frequency noise and feedback strength, collective fluctuations of the repetition rate are strongly suppressed.

The result is a microcomb exhibiting ultralow phase noise and dramatically reduced timing jitter.

In a 100 GHz silicon nitride soliton microcomb, we achieve an unprecedented combination of high-conversion efficiency, sub-Hertz intrinsic linewidth across the entire C band, and an integrated timing jitter of 1 fs.

This approach enables chip-scale microcombs with remarkable noise performance and fs-level pulse stability, surpassing conventional noise limits and opening new avenues for precision metrology at the chip scale.