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SOLITON MICROCOMBS

Got the quantum jitters

Nature Physics volume 17, pages 432–434 (2021)Cite this article

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Among the many reasons a signal may deviate from perfect periodicity, quantum-limited jitter is arguably the most fundamental. A clever experiment has now stripped away technical noise to unveil quantum-limited jitter of ultrafast soliton frequency combs.

What do you get when your periodic signal turns out to be not quite as periodic as you thought? The answer is jitter — random deviation from true periodicity. Jitter has many technical origins ranging from device imperfections to fluctuations in the ambient environment. But beneath these many varied sources lurks one that is more fundamental, unavoidable and elusive than the others: the jitter associated with the peculiarities of quantum physics itself. Now, writing in Nature Physics, Chengying Bao and colleagues describe an experiment that has resolved the quantum-limited timing jitter of one of the most important optical technologies to emerge in the past decade1 — the soliton microresonator frequency comb2.

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Fig. 1: Microcavity solitons and soliton jitter.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies, Department of Physics, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Miro Erkintalo

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  1. Miro Erkintalo
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Correspondence to Miro Erkintalo.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Erkintalo, M. Got the quantum jitters. Nat. Phys. 17, 432–434 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-01118-7

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