Design, Construction, and Stabilization of Affordable Optical Frequency Combs

While optical frequency combs have many applications in the sciences, their price tags typically fall between a quarter and half a million dollars. We have constructed an adjustable repetition rate optical frequency comb for a fraction of that price, demonstrating affordability of this technology beyond large-scale, state-of-the-art research facilities. Our design is a modification of an established erbium-doped fiber design. We achieve repetition rate adjustment through the addition of a free space section to this traditional all-fiber design, which allows us to adjust the repetition rate to better match our all-fiber design to be used in dual comb molecular spectroscopy. In addition, because long-term stabilization is essential for dual comb molecular spectroscopy, we integrated both temperature control and two piezoelectric transducers in our design. We installed one slow piezo to compensate for any temperature and vibration fluctuations and one fast piezo for any electric or acoustic fluctuations. Preliminary results will be shown including stabilization results and early spectra. The goal of this project is to implement this comb into a dual-comb spectrometer for the ro-vibrational spectroscopy of benzene.