Synchronized Generation of Reconfigurable Microwave Sinusoidal Wave Packets From a Free-Running Pulsed Laser

Generation of customized microwave sinusoidal wave packets precisely synchronized with a free-running pulsed laser is required for many electrooptic modulation-based optical pulse processing and measurement applications. We propose and experimentally demonstrate a simple technique for this purpose. This technique is based on optical frequency-to-time conversion of a spectral interference in a fiber-optic two-arm interferometer with a wavelength-dithering feedback control. The same platform can be used to operate over a wide range of input repetition rates and can be optically reconfigured for tuning the frequency, amplitude, and phase of the generated microwave sinusoids.