Pablo Marin-Palomo

Vrije Universiteit Brussel | VUB · Brussels Photonics Team (B-PHOT)

Semiconductor lasers are nowadays simply unavoidable and essential light sources. While their complexity and dynamical behavior have attracted some attention from a fundamental viewpoint, these special properties remain largely left aside in applications outside the lab. The development of multi-wavelength or multi-color lasers may be a turning poi...

Asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometers (AMZIs) can, in principle, enable continuous wavelength tuning of a laser when used as intra-cavity filters. Their simplicity and good compatibility with generic foundry platforms are major advantages. However, the difficulty to develop a well-defined and robust control strategy is an important drawback which...

Comb-based optical arbitrary waveform measurement (OAWM) techniques can overcome the bandwidth limitations of conventional coherent detection schemes, thereby enabling ultra-broadband signal acquisition in a wide range of scientific and industrial applications. For efficient and robust implementation of such OAWM systems, miniaturization into chip-...

On-chip frequency comb sources have emerged as a revolutionary technology that enables broadband frequency combs with unprecedented compactness, energy efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. This technology has found widespread applications ranging from spectroscopy and lidar to telecommunications. However, on-chip comb sources face a fundamental trad...

We propose and demonstrate a novel scheme for optical arbitrary waveform measurement (OAWM) that exploits chip-scale Kerr soliton combs as highly scalable multiwavelength local oscillators (LO) for ultra-broadband full-field waveform acquisition. In contrast to earlier concepts, our approach does not require any optical slicing filters and thus len...

Lasers designed to emit at multiple and controllable modes, or multi-wavelength lasers, have the potential to become key building blocks for future microwave photonic technologies. While many interesting schemes relying on optical injection have been proposed, the nonlinear mode coupling between different modes of a multi-wavelength laser and their...

Coherent reception becomes an interesting option when data rates in time-division-multiplexed (TDM) passive optical networks (PONs) grow beyond 50 Gbit/s. Controlling the wavelength, i.e., the optical frequency, and the phase of the laser acting as local oscillator (LO) is one of the main technical challenges in the design of coherent TDM PONs. In...

Lasers designed to emit at multiple and controllable modes, or multi-wavelength lasers, have the potential to become key building blocks for future microwave photonic technologies. While many interesting schemes relying on optical injection have been proposed, the nonlinear mode coupling between different modes of a multi-wavelength laser and their...

We demonstrate an optical arbitrary waveform measurement (OAWM) technique that exploits optical frequency combs as multi-wavelength local oscillators (LO) and that does not require any optical slicing filters. In a proof-of-concept experiment, we achieve record-high bandwidths exceeding 600 GHz.

We investigate experimentally and theoretically the response of dual-wavelength laser to single optical injection and focus on cross-coupling effect. We highlight a major influence of the coupling and power balance on the injection locking range.

We demonstrate an optical arbitrary waveform measurement (OAWM) system that exploits a bank of silicon photonic (SiP) frequency-tunable coupled-resonator optical waveguide (CROW) filters for gapless spectral slicing of broadband optical signals. The spectral slices are coherently detected using a frequency comb as a multi-wavelength local oscillato...

We demonstrate a photonic-electronic analog-to-digital converter (ADC) offering a record-high acquisition bandwidth of 320 GHz. The system combines a high-speed electro-optic modulator with a Kerr comb for spectrally sliced coherent detection and is used for digitizing ultra-broadband data signals.

Combining semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) on direct-bandgap III–V substrates with low-loss silicon or silicon-nitride photonic integrated circuits (PIC) has been key to chip-scale external-cavity lasers (ECL) that offer wideband tunability along with small optical linewidths. However, fabrication of such devices still relies on technological...

Multi-photon lithography has emerged as a powerful tool for photonic integration, allowing to complement planar photonic circuits by 3D-printed freeform structures such as waveguides or micro-optical elements. These structures can be fabricated with high precision on the facets of optical devices and lend themselves to highly efficient package-leve...

We demonstrate optical arbitrary waveform measurement (OAWM) using a silicon photonic spectral slicer. Exploiting maximal-ratio combining (MRC), we demonstrate the viability of the scheme by reconstructing 100-GBd 64QAM signals with high quality.

Kerr frequency comb generation relies on dedicated waveguide platforms that are optimized toward ultralow loss while offering comparatively limited functionality restricted to passive building blocks. In contrast to that, the silicon-photonic platform offers a highly developed portfolio of high-performance devices, but suffers from strong two-photo...

We demonstrate optical arbitrary waveform measurement (OAWM) using a silicon pho-tonic spectral slicer. Exploiting maximal-ratio combining (MRC), we demonstrate the viability of the scheme by reconstructing 100-GBd 64QAM signals with high quality.

Three-dimensional (3D) nano-printing of freeform optical waveguides, also referred to as photonic wire bonding, allows for efficient coupling between photonic chips and can greatly simplify optical system assembly. As a key advantage, the shape and the trajectory of photonic wire bonds can be adapted to the mode-field profiles and the positions of...

Chip-scale frequency comb generators lend themselves as multi-wavelength light sources in highly scalable wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) transmitters and coherent receivers. Among different options, quantum-dash (QD) mode-locked laser diodes (MLLD) stand out due to their compactness and simple operation along with the ability to provide a f...

The effect of phase noise introduced by optical sources in spectrally-sliced optically enabled DACs and ADCs is modeled and analyzed in detail. In both data converter architectures, a mode-locked laser is assumed to provide an optical comb whose lines are used to either synthesize or analyze individual spectral slices. While the optical phase noise...

Novel analog-to-digital converter (ADC) architectures are motivated by the demand for rising sampling rates and effective number of bits (ENOB). The main limitation on ENOB in purely electrical ADCs lies in the relatively high jitter of oscillators, in the order of a few tens of fs for state-of-the-art components. When compared to the extremely low...

Kerr frequency comb generation relies on dedicated waveguide platforms that are optimized towards ultralow loss while offering comparatively limited functionality restricted to passive building blocks. In contrast to that, the silicon-photonic platform offers a highly developed portfolio of high-performance devices, but is deemed to be inherently u...

We demonstrate an InP/Silicon integrated ECL using a photonic wirebond as intra-cavity coupling element. In our proof-of-concept experiments, we demonstrate 50 nm tuning range, SMSR above 40 dB, and linewidths of 750 kHz.

We propose a novel coherent TWDM PON architecture. Using a chip-scale QD-MLLD and low-cost thermally tuned DFB lasers, we demonstrate error-free reception of 80 Gb/s at a loss budget of 28 dB with ONU laser variation of 2 nm (0.25 THz).

Optical frequency combs have the potential to become key building blocks of wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) communication systems. The strictly equidistant narrow-band spectral lines of a frequency comb can serve either as carriers for parallel WDM transmission or as local-oscillator (LO) tones for parallel coherent reception. When it comes...

Quantum-dash (QD) mode-locked laser diodes (MLLD) lend themselves as chip-scale frequency comb generators for highly scalable wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) links in future data-center, campus-area, or metropolitan networks. Driven by a simple DC current, the devices generate flat broadband frequency combs, containing tens of equidistant op...

Chip-scale frequency comb generators have the potential to become key building blocks of compact wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) transceivers in future metropolitan or campus-area networks. Among the various comb generator concepts, quantum-dash (QD) mode-locked laser diodes (MLLD) stand out as a particularly promising option, combining smal...

Quantum-dash (QD) mode-locked laser diodes (MLLD) lend themselves as chip-scale frequency comb generators for highly scalable wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) links in future data-center, campus-area, or metropolitan networks. Driven by a simple DC current, the devices generate flat broadband frequency combs, containing tens of equidistant op...

Future wireless communication networks will need to handle data rates of tens or even hundreds of Gbit s⁻¹ per link, requiring carrier frequencies in the unallocated THz spectrum1,2. In this context, seamless integration of THz links into existing fibre-optic infrastructures³ is of great importance to complement the inherent portability and flexibi...

Optical frequency combs have the potential to become key building blocks of optical communication subsystems. The strictly equidistant, narrow-band spectral lines of a frequency comb can serve both as carriers for massively parallel data transmission and as local oscillator for coherent reception. Recent experiments have demonstrated the viability...

Chip-scale frequency comb generators have the potential to become key building blocks of compact wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) transceivers in future metropolitan or campus-area networks. Among the various comb generator concepts, quantum-dash (QD) mode-locked laser diodes (MLLD) stand out as a particularly promising option, combining smal...

Efficient coupling of III-V light sources to silicon photonic circuits is one of the key challenges of integrated optics. Important requirements are low coupling losses, as well as small footprint and high yield of the overall assembly, along with the ability to use automated processes for large-scale production. In this paper, we demonstrate that...

Miniaturized optical ranging and tracking Light detection and ranging systems are used in many engineering and environmental sensing applications. Their relatively large size and cost, however, tend to be prohibitive for general use in autonomous vehicles and drones. Suh and Vahala and Trocha et al. show that optical frequency combs generated by mi...

We demonstrate ultra-fast high-precision distance measurements using a pair of dissipative Kerr-soliton frequency combs. We achieve sub-µm accuracy for static targets and measurement rates of 10 MHz that allow sampling of air-gun bullets on the fly.

We demonstrate coherent WDM transmission using a pair of quantum-dash modelocked laser-diodes - one to generate a multitude of optical carriers, and another to generate a multitude of LO tones. We transmit a line rate of 4 Tbit/s (23×45 GBd PDM-QPSK) over 75 km.

We demonstrate coherent WDM transmission using a quantum-dash mode-locked laser diode with resonant feedback. We report a line rate of 12 Tbit/s (32QAM 60×20 GBd PDM) over 75 km SMF. The spectral efficiency is 7.5 bit/s/Hz.

Steadily increasing data rates of optical interfaces require spectrally efficient coherent transmission using higher-order modulation formats in combination with scalable wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) schemes. At the transmitter, optical frequency combs (OFC) lend themselves to particularly precise multi-wavelength sources for WDM transmis...

Optical solitons are waveforms that preserve their shape while travelling, relying on a balance of dispersion and nonlinearity. Data transmission schemes using solitons were heavily investigated in the 1980s promising to overcome the limitations imposed by dispersion of optical fibers. These approaches, however, were eventually abandoned in favour...

We propose the Karhunen-Loève functions as a set of basis to decompose atmospheric phase aberrations in holographic wavefront sensing. We evaluate the sensor’s performance in the presence of atmospheric turbulence and compare it with the sensor based on Zernike decomposition.

Research activities in the Adaptive Optics Group at the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation (IOSB) in Ettlingen, Germany, revolve around imaging and laser propagation through strong turbulence, especially along horizontal paths. We are developing simulations, theoretical models, image processing software an...

Correction of atmospheric effects on the propagation of laser light can be achieved with adaptive optics (AO) by relying on adequate wavefront sensors. For free-space laser communications and for tracking of high-speed airborne objects Shack-Hartmann sensor is not effective. Its performance is severely limited by scintillation. We characterize a pr...

Correction of atmospheric effects on the propagation of laser light can be achieved with adaptive optics (AO) by relying on adequate wavefront sensors. For free-space laser communications and for tracking of high-speed airborne objects, conventional wavefront sensing methods e.g. those based on the Shack-Hartmann sensor (SHS), are not always effect...