Point-to-point stabilized optical frequency transfer with active optics

Abstract

Timescale comparison between optical atomic clocks over ground-to-space and terrestrial free-space laser links will have enormous benefits for fundamental and applied sciences. However, atmospheric turbulence creates phase noise and beam wander that degrade the measurement precision. Here we report on phase-stabilized optical frequency transfer over a 265 m horizontal point-to-point free-space link between optical terminals with active tip-tilt mirrors to suppress beam wander, in a compact, human-portable set-up. A phase-stabilized 715 m underground optical fiber link between the two terminals is used to measure the performance of the free-space link. The active optical terminals enable continuous, cycle-slip free, coherent transmission over periods longer than an hour. In this work, we achieve residual instabilities of 2.7 × 10⁻⁶ rad² Hz⁻¹ at 1 Hz in phase, and 1.6 × 10⁻¹⁹ at 40 s of integration in fractional frequency; this performance surpasses the best optical atomic clocks, ensuring clock-limited frequency comparison over turbulent free-space links.