Abstract

Many areas of optical science require an accurate measurement of optical spectra. Devices based on laser speckle promise compact wavelength measurement, with attometer-level sensitivity demonstrated for single wavelength laser fields. The measurement of multimode spectra using this approach would be attractive, yet this is currently limited to picometer resolution. Here, we present a method to improve the resolution and precision of speckle-based multi-wavelength measurements. We measure multiple wavelengths simultaneously, in a device comprising a single 1-m-long step-index multimode fiber and a fast camera. Independent wavelengths separated by as little as 1 fm are retrieved with 0.2 fm precision using principal component analysis. The method offers a viable way to measure sparse spectra containing multiple individual lines and may find application in the tracking of multiple lasers in fields such as quantum technologies and optical telecommunications.

© 2020 Optical Society of America

Overcoming the speckle correlation limit to achieve a fiber wavemeter with attometer resolution

Graham D. Bruce, Laura O’Donnell, Mingzhou Chen, and Kishan Dholakia
Opt. Lett. 44(6) 1367-1370 (2019)

High-resolution wavemeter using Rayleigh speckle obtained by optical time domain reflectometry

Yangyang Wan, Shuai Wang, Xinyu Fan, Zhaopeng Zhang, and Zuyuan He
Opt. Lett. 45(4) 799-802 (2020)

Rayleigh speckle-based wavemeter with high dynamic range and fast reference speckle establishment process assisted by optical frequency combs

Yangyang Wan, Xinyu Fan, Shuai Wang, Zhaopeng Zhang, Bingxin Xu, and Zuyuan He
Opt. Lett. 46(6) 1241-1244 (2021)

Multimode-fiber-based single-shot full-field measurement of optical pulses

Wen Xiong, Shai Gertler, Hasan Yilmaz, and Hui Cao
Opt. Lett. 45(8) 2462-2465 (2020)

Femtometer-resolved wavelength monitor based on photodiode optoelectronic chromatic dispersion with RF phase-shift amplification

Egor Liokumovitch, Ziv Glasser, and Shmuel Sternklar
Opt. Lett. 47(11) 2622-2625 (2022)