Highly coherent hybrid dual-comb spectrometer

Dual comb spectroscopy (DCS) is a broadband technique offering high resolution and fast data acquisition. Current state-of-the-art designs are based on a pair of fiber or solid-state lasers, which allow broadband spectroscopy but require a complicated stabilization setup. Semiconductor lasers are tunable, cost-effective, and easily integrable while limited by a narrow bandwidth. This motivates a hybrid design combining the advantages of both systems. However, establishing sufficiently long mutual coherence time remains challenging. This work describes a hybrid dual-comb spectrometer comprising a broadband fiber laser (FC) and an actively mode-locked semiconductor laser (MLL) with a narrow but tunable spectrum. A high mutual coherence time of around 100 seconds has been achieved by injection locking the MLL to a continuous laser (CW), which is locked on a single line of the FC. We have also devised a method to directly stabilize the entire spectrum of FC to a high finesse cavity. This results in a long term stability of 5 x 10-12 at 1 second and 5 x 10-14 at 350 seconds. Additionally, we have addressed the effect of cavity dispersion on the locking quality, which is important for broadband comb lasers.& COPY; 2023 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement

Automated summary

Dual comb spectroscopy (DCS) is a broadband technique that offers high resolution and fast data acquisition. Current designs are based on fiber or solid-state lasers, which require complicated stabilization setups. This work describes a hybrid dual-comb spectrometer that combines a broadband fiber laser and a mode-locked semiconductor laser. The mutual coherence time of 100 seconds has been achieved by injection locking the semiconductor laser to a continuous laser.