Characterization of Short-Term Ultra-Stable Radio Frequency Sources Generated from Cavity Based Optical Reference Systems

SummaryOptical frequency references have evolved during the past years, providing an optical continuous wave signal with a better stability than traditional radio frequency references such as atomic clocks by several orders of magnitude. However, as the optical frequency is hardly directly countable, what is needed to provide timing and clock signals, the current limitation of the application of the system is given by the optical-to-RF converter, which generates an RF-Signal (radiofrequency, e.g. 10MHz). Typically, this is achieved by an optical frequency comb locked to the optical reference. In this manuscript we fully characterize a complete optical-to-RF converting chain based on commercially available products, showing a fractional frequency stability (ADEV) better than 1x10
^-14
at one second integration time.