LPL - Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers

Metrology, Molecules and Fundamental Tests (MMT)


Frequency dissemination by optical fiber link

Anne Amy-Klein, Christian Chardonnet, Olivier Lopez, Etienne Cantin



Reseau REFIMEV
REFIMEVE network on October 1, 2022 (in green), with European connections (in red) and future national extensions (in black).


The dissemination of ultra-stable frequency references between distant laboratories is a major challenge for a wide range of very high sensitivity experiments, in metrology or fundamental physics. For instance, at LPL, our very high resolution molecular spectroscopy experiments require extremely precise control of the frequency of our lasers. For this purpose, we have been developing fiber optic links for 20 years. These links consist in transferring by optical fiber the phase of an ultrastable laser emitting at 1.5 µm, whose frequency is controlled with the LNE-SYRTE clocks, while correcting the phase fluctuations added during the propagation, due to thermal and acoustic variations of the optical length of the fiber.


After the development of an optical link between LNE-SYRTE and LPL, we undertook to develop a national network of optical links, REFIMEVE, which became a national research infrastructure in 2021. For this purpose, we have initiated a partnership with RENATER (Réseau National de télécommunications pour la Technologie l'Enseignement et la Recherche), which allows us to directly use the fibers of the national academic network to transmit the ultrastable signal, by wavelength division multiplexing. We have also submitted and obtained two projects from the "Programme d'Investissements d'Avenir", the Equipex REFIMEVE+ and T-REFIMEVE in order to finance the development of this network. Finally, we are partners in several European projects for the development of optical links and the comparison of the best European optical clocks. The REFIMEVE network currently extends over 6500 km of optical links with connections to the main European national metrology institutes, and soon a connection to CERN [1, 7]. It allows the dissemination of an ultra-stable frequency signal with a relative uncertainty better than 10-19 . It is equipped with optical signal regeneration stations, whose prototypes were developed at LPL, and which are now commercialized by the company Ixblue [8].


Our research activities are currently focused on the study of the fundamental limits of optical links [4, 6], the development of optical networks and time transfer over very long distances [2, 3, 7] and the applications of these links to earth sciences for example. With our European partners, we have also contributed to several clock comparison campaigns. These measurements of record precision allow to access the differences in gravitational potential by relativistic geodesy [10], or to search for new physics beyond the standard model, such as the search for dark matter for example [5, 9].


 

Contacts

Anne Amy-KleinEtienne Cantin, Christian Chardonnet

 


References

  1. C. Clivati et al, Coherent optical fiber link across Italy and France, Physical Review Applied 18, 054009 (2022).

  2. M. Schioppo et al, Comparison of ultrastable lasers at 7x10-17 fractional frequency instability through a 2,220 km long optical fibre link network, Nature Comm. 13, 212 (2022).

  3. E. Cantin, M. Tønnes, R. Le Targat, A. Amy-Klein, O. Lopez, P.-E. Pottie, An accurate and robust metrological network for coherent optical frequency dissemination, New J. Phys. 23, p 053027 (2021).

  4. Dan Xu, Olivier Lopez, Anne Amy-Klein, Paul-Eric Pottie, Non-reciprocity in optical fiber links: first experimental evidence, Optics Express 29, p 17476-17489 (2021).

  5. B. M. Roberts, P. Delva et al, Search for transient variations of the fine structure constant and dark matter using fiber-linked optical atomic clocks, New Journal of Physics 22, 093010 (2020).

  6. Dan Xu, Olivier Lopez, Anne Amy-Klein, and Paul-Eric Pottie, Unidirectional two-way optical frequency comparison and its fundamental limitations, Optics Letters 45, 6074-6077 (2020).

  7. Sebastian Koke, Alexander Kuhl, Thomas Waterholter, Sebastian M.F. Raupach, Olivier Lopez, Etienne Cantin, Nicolas Quintin, Anne Amy-Klein, Paul-Eric Pottie, and Gesine Grosche, Combining fiber Brillouin amplification with a repeater laser station for fiber-based optical frequency dissemination over 1400 km, New J. Phys. 21, 123017 (2019).

  8. F. Guillou-Camargo, V. Ménoret, E. Cantin, O. Lopez, N. Quintin, E. Camisard, V. Salmon, J.-M. Le Merdy, G. Santarelli, A. Amy-Klein, P.-E. Pottie, B. Desruelle and C. Chardonnet, First industrial-grade coherent fiber link for optical frequency standard dissemination, Applied optics 57, 7203-7210 (2018).

  9. P. Delva, J. Lodewyck, S. Bilicki, E. Bookjans, G. Vallet, R. Le Targat, P.-E. Pottie, C. Guerlin, F. Meynadier, C. Le Poncin-Laffitte, O. Lopez, A. Amy-Klein, W. Kyu Lee, N. Quintin, C. Lisdat, A. Al-Masoudi, S. Dorscher, C. Grebing, G. Grosche, U. Sterr, I. R. Hill, R. Hobson, W. Bowden, J. Kronjager, G. Marra, A. Rolland, F. N. Baynes, H. S. Margolis, and P. Gill,
    Test of special relativity using a fiber network of optical clocks, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 221102, (2017).

  10. Lisdat C., Grosche G., Quintin N., Shi C., Raupach S.M.F., Grebing C., Nicolodi D., Stefani F., Al-Masoudi A., Dörscher S., Häfner S., Robyr J.-.-L, Chiodo N., Bilicki S., Bookjans E., Koczwara A., Koke S., Kuhl A., Wiotte F., Meynadier F., Camisard E., Abgrall M., Lours M., Legero T., Schnatz H., Sterr U., Denker H., Chardonnet C., Le Coq Y., Santarelli G., Amy-Klein A., Le Targat R., Lodewyck J., Lopez O., Pottie P.-É.,
    A clock network for geodesy and fundamental science, Nature Communications, 7, 12443, (2016).

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