Pump-linewidth-tolerant wavelength multicasting using soliton Kerr frequency combs

We experimentally demonstrate pump-linewidth-tolerant wavelength multicasting using microresonator-based soliton Kerr frequency combs. When Kerr comb lines serve as coherent pumps in a periodically poled lithium niobate waveguide, the linewidth of the multicast signal almost remains that of the original signal at different linewidths of Kerr combs, ranging from 100 kHz to 1 MHz.

However, in conventional multicasting where free-running (FR) pumps are used, the linewidth of the converted signal significantly increases. Furthermore, the error vector magnitude (EVM) performance demonstrates eight-fold error-free multicasting of 10 Gbaud 16-quadrature amplitude modulation signals, even when the linewidths of the Kerr combs are as broad as 1 MHz (no Kalman filtering algorithm in the receiver).

In contrast, the EVM performance of the signal copy is degraded with an FR laser as a dummy pump.