Photonic local oscillator technics for large-scale interferometers

In signal transmission through optical fiber, cable length delay fluctuation accompanied by chromatic and polarization-mode dispersion affects the coherence of distributed signals. To maintain signal coherence, it is very important to generate very-high-frequency signals with minimum phase noise and transmission loss. In a photonic local signal generation/distribution system with a microwave-photonic signal generator and a real-time microwave-photonic signal phase stabilizer that we developed as an alternative photonic LO system for ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array), signals are transmitted in the form of frequency difference between two coherent light waves, effectively maintaining the coherence of distributed reference signals. Through the development of the real-time phase stabilizer, we discovered that the system would be further improved with the introduction of a post-processing scheme phase stabilizer and confirmed its effectiveness by experiments.