Transportable cavity-stabilized laser system for optical carrier frequency transmission experiments

© 2014 Optical Society of America. We report the design and performance of a transportable laser system at 1543 nm, together with its application as the source for a demonstration of optical carrier frequency transmission over 118 km of an installed dark fiber network. The laser system is based around an optical reference cavity featuring an elastic mounting that bonds the cavity to its support, enabling the cavity to be transported without additional clamping. The cavity exhibits passive fractional frequency insensitivity to vibration along the optical axis of 2.0 × 10-11m-1s2. With active fiber noise cancellation, the optical carrier frequency transmission achieves a fractional frequency instability, measured at the user end, of 2.6 × 10-16at 1 s, averaging down to below 3 × 10-18 after 20,000 s. The fractional frequency accuracy of the transfer is better than 3 × 10-18. This level of performance is sufficient for comparison of state-of-the-art optical frequency standards and is achieved in an urban fiber environment.