Microwave signal extraction from femtosecond mode-locked lasers with attosecond relative timing drift

We present a feedback-control method for suppression of excess phase noise in the optical-to-electronic conversion process involved in the extraction of microwave signals from femtosecond mode-locked lasers. A delay-locked loop based on drift-free phase detection with a differentially biased Sagnac loop is employed to eliminate low-frequency (e. g., <1 kHz) excess phase noise and drift in the regenerated microwave signals. A 10 GHz microwave signal is extracted from a 200 MHz repetition rate mode-locked laser with a relative rms timing jitter of 2: 4 fs (integrated from 1 mHz to 1 MHz) and a relative rms timing drift of 0: 84 fs (integrated over 8 h with 1 Hz bandwidth) between the optical pulse train and the extracted microwave signal. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America