Ultranarrow linewidth photonic-atomic laser

Published

January 8, 2020

Author(s)

Wei Zhang, Liron Stern, David R. Carlson, Douglas G. Bopp, Zachary L. Newman, Songbai Kang, John Kitching, Scott Papp

Abstract

Lasers with high spectral purity can enable a diverse application space, including precision spectroscopy, coherent high-speed communications, physical sensing, and manipulation of quantum systems. Already, meticulous design and construction of bench Fabry-Perot cavities has madepossible dramatic achievements in active laser-linewidth reduction, predominantly for optical-atomic clocks. Yet there is increasing demand for miniaturized laser systems operating with high performance in ambient environments. Here, we report a compact and robust photonic-atomic laser comprising a 2.5-cm long, 20,000 finesse, monolithic Fabry-Perot cavity integrated with a micromachined rubidium vapor cell. By leveraging the short-time frequency stability of the cavity and the long-time frequency stability of atoms, we realize an ultranarrow-line width laser that enables integration for extended measurements. Specifically, our laser supports a fractional-frequency stability of 1×10−13 after 20 ms of measurement time,7×10−13 after 300 s,an integrated linewidth of 25 Hz that results from thermal noise, a Lorentzian linewidth as low as 0.06 Hz2/Hz, and a passive vibration immunity as low as 10−10/g. Our work explores hybrid laser systems with monolithic photonic and atomic packages based on physical design.

Citation

Optica

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

Atomic stabilization, Optical cavities, Ultranarrow lasers

Citation

Zhang, W. , Stern, L. , Carlson, D. , Bopp, D. , Newman, Z. , Kang, S. , Kitching, J. and Papp, S. (2020), Ultranarrow linewidth photonic-atomic laser, Optica, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=927983 (Accessed October 14, 2025)