Active compensation of the ac Stark shift in a two-photon rubidium optical frequency reference using power modulation

Published

March 18, 2026

Author(s)

Yorick Andeweg, Matthew Hummon, John Kitching

Abstract

We implement a feedback protocol to suppress the ac Stark shift in a two-photon rubidium optical frequency reference, reducing its sensitivity to optical power variations by a factor of 1000. This method alleviates the tradeoff between short-term and long-term stability imposed by the ac Stark shift, enabling us to simultaneously achieve instabilities of 3 ×10^−14 at 1 s and 2 ×10^−14 at 10^4 s. We also quantitatively describe, and experimentally explore, a stability limit imposed on clocks using this method by frequency noise on the local oscillator.

Citation

Physical Review Applied

Volume

25

Issue

3

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/25md-vv43

Local Download

Keywords

Atomic clock, optical clock, frequency reference

Citation

Andeweg, Y. , Hummon, M. and Kitching, J. (2026), Active compensation of the ac Stark shift in a two-photon rubidium optical frequency reference using power modulation, Physical Review Applied, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/25md-vv43, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=960267 (Accessed March 31, 2026)