A phase stable hybrid dual comb spectrometer

Abstract

Dual comb spectroscopy (DCS) is a broadband technique offering high resolution and fast data acquisition. We describe a hybrid dual comb spectrometer comprising a broadband commercial fiber laser system offering a wide range of sample interrogation, and an actively mode locked semiconductor laser (MLL) having a widely tunable, relatively narrow spectrum. The mutual coherence over 100 seconds has been realized between the two combs. We employed the DCS system to characterize the absorption spectrum of rubidium atoms at 313 K with a high signal to noise ratio. The broadband laser is directly locked on a high finesse cavity, providing long-term stability, while the semiconductor laser is locked to it. To characterize the absolute stability of the DCS system, the linewidth of the MLL comb line is measured and shown to reduce from 880 kHz to $17$ kHz when the system is fully locked. The long-term stability was measured to be $5 \times 10^{-12}$ at $1$ second and $5 \times 10^{-14}$ at $350$ seconds. The measured timing jitter of the MLL is ten times smaller due to the overall locking. In addition, we have addressed the effect of dispersion on the locking quality, which is significant for broadband comb lasers.