Digitally generated high-resolution mid-infrared dual-comb spectroscopy system based on electro-optic modulation

In this Letter, we propose a high-resolution dual-comb spectroscopy (DCS) in the mid-infrared (MIR) region. A broadband electro-optic frequency comb (EOFC) with a line spacing of 13 GHz is generated in the near-infrared region. The injection locking technique is employed to lock the distributed feedback (DFB) laser to each comb line of the 34 comb lines as the seed laser for the subsequent electro-optic modulation. A dual radio frequency (RF) comb source with a 50 MHz line spacing and a 13 GHz bandwidth drives a single IQ Mach-Zehnder modulator (IQ-MZM), functioning as a single-sideband (SSB) generator and producing a DCS with high spectrum flatness and resolution flexibility. The generated DCS is converted to the MIR region via a nonlinear difference frequency generation (DFG) system. A DCS with a bandwidth of 442 GHz and a resolution of 50 MHz is achieved in the 3.3 µm region, and the figure of merit reaches 2.94×10⁶ <i>H</i> <i>z</i> ¹² in a 183.6 ms measurement time.