Experimental study of a crystalline-resonator based optoelectronic oscillator

International audienceIn this work, we present experimental results on an optoelectronic resonator (OEO) based on intensity modulation and a high-Q disk resonator. In our configuration, the crystalline whispering-gallery-mode resonator acts both as a frequency filter, selecting the microwave oscillating frequency, and as an optical storage element. In such a system, the oscillating frequency corresponds to the free spectral range of the resonator (between 10 GHz and 11 GHz), and therefore no delayinduced spurious peaks are present in the spectrum, in contrast to the case of the classical optoelectronic oscillator where the storage element consists of an optical fiber delay line. An other advantage of our system resides in its compactness allowing for efficient control of the temperature