Control of the frequency comb from a mode-locked Erbium-doped fiber laser

We show that a stretched-pulse mode-locked fiber laser produces a well-defined frequency comb, providing a compact source of frequency combs and allowing comb-based optical frequency metrology to be extended into the 1.55 mum region. This is achieved by comparing the frequency doubled output of the fiber laser to that of a mode-locked Ti:Sapphire laser, after the two lasers are synchronized. The offset frequency of the fiber laser frequency comb is found to be highly sensitive to the pump power, which enables the implementation of a feedback loop to control the offset frequency. The resulting RMS frequency jitter of the heterodyne beat signal is 355 kHz (0.5 Hz - 102 kHz BW) for this initial demonstration. (C) 2002 Optical Society of America.