Dual-Frequency Laser for the Generation of Rapidly Tunable High Purity Radiofrequency Signals

Rapidly tunable RF signals at high frequency (>10 GHz) with high purity is a challenge that is more and more faced with optical solutions. Optical mixing of two laser fields has extensively been studied for that purpose. However, when the two fields come from independent laser sources, their phase locking remains a tour de force. Direct generation of two optical fields with close frequency difference in a single laser, so-called dual frequency laser (DFL), greatly reduces the drifts, as the cavity is shared [1]. We here report our last achievements in the generation of Ka-band RF signal generation with DFL technology.