Silicon-based monolithic optical frequency comb source

We demonstrate the generation of broad-bandwidth optical frequency combs from a CMOS-compatible integrated microresonator. We characterize the comb quality using a novel self-referencing method and verify that the comb line frequencies are equidistant over a bandwidth of 115 nm (14.5 THz), which is nearly an order of magnitude larger than previous measurements. (C)2011 Optical Society of America