Ramsey-Borde Matter-Wave Interferometry for Laser Frequency Stabilization at 10-16 Frequency Instability and Below

Published

August 13, 2019

Author(s)

Judith B. Olson, Todd Sheerin, Holly Leopardi, Roger C. Brown, Richard W. Fox, Rick Stoner, Tara M. Fortier, Christopher W. Oates, Andrew D. Ludlow

Abstract

We demonstrate Ramsey-Borde (RB) atom interferometry for high performance laser stabilization with fractional frequency instability −16 for timescales between 10 and 1000s. The RB spectroscopy laser interrogates two counterpropagating ⁴⁰Ca beams on the ¹S₀ - ³ P₁ transition at 657 nm, yielding 1.6 kHz linewidth interference fringes. Fluorescence detection of the excited state population is performed on the (4_s4_p) ³P₁ − (4_p²) ³P₀ transition at 431 nm. Minimal thermal shielding and no vibration isolation are used. These stability results surpass performance from other thermal atomic or molecular systems by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude, and further improvements look feasible.

Citation

Physical Review Letters

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

atomic clock, atom interferometry, laser stabilization, laser spectroscopy, optical clock, Ramsey-Bord/'e

Citation

Olson, J. , Sheerin, T. , Leopardi, H. , Brown, R. , Fox, R. , Stoner, R. , Fortier, T. , Oates, C. and Ludlow, A. (2019), Ramsey-Borde Matter-Wave Interferometry for Laser Frequency Stabilization at 10^-16 Frequency Instability and Below, Physical Review Letters, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=927443 (Accessed April 20, 2024)