Novel Polarization Control Approach to Long-Term Fiber-Optic Frequency Transfer

Abstract

We demonstrate a novel polarization control system based on a gradient descent algorithm, applied to a 450-km optical frequency transfer link. The power of the out-loop beat note is retrieved by controlling the polarization state of the transferred signal, with a recovery time of 24 ms, thereby ensuring the long-term evaluation of the fiber link. As a result, data utilization is enhanced from 70% to 99% over a continuous measurement period of ∼12 h. A fractional transfer instability of 7.2 × 10−20 is achieved at an integration time of 10000 s. This work lays the foundation for the comparison of a remote optical clock system via a long-haul optical fiber link.