Development of the reference light source with the world highest quality - successful generation of optical signals with high stability, accuracy, and speed -
| Science
The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and the National Astronomy Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) have successfully developed a photonic millimeter-wave reference source with the world’s highest stability and accuracy. This is part of the ALMA Project that is constructing 66 parabola antennas in Chile (the ALMA Telescope/ALMA). Satisfying the severe ALMA specifications, the developed reference light source will serve as the heart of ALMA to generate highly stable, high-speed signals that cover a very wide frequency band (20 GHZ to 120 GHz). Another vital role of the light source is to make the signal phase precisely coherent so as to realize high spatial resolution to be obtained by integrating data from the ALMA Telescope. NICT and NAOJ are studying how to utilize the light source for precise measurements of high-speed optical devices to support high-capacity communications. This development was presented at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the IEEE Photonics Society held in Denver, U.S. from November 7 through 11.