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arXiv:2311.08542 · Optics Express

Laser frequency stabilization by modulation transfer spectroscopy and balanced detection of molecular iodine for laser cooling of 174 Yb

Álvaro Mitchell Galvão de Melo, Hector Letellier, Apoorva Apoorva, Antoine Glicenstein, Robin Kaiser

Published Jan 22, 2024• 15 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We report laser frequency stabilization by the combination of modulation transfer spectroscopy and balanced detection of a relatively weak hyperfine transition of the R(158)25-0 line of molecular iodine ( 127 I 2 ), which is used as a new frequency reference for laser trapping and cooling of 174 Yb on the 1 S 0 − 3 P 1 transition. The atomic cloud is characterized by time-of-flight measurements, and an on-resonance optical depth of up to 47 is obtained. We show laser noise reduction and characterize the short-term laser frequency instability by the Allan deviation of the laser fractional frequency. The minimum measured value is 3.9 ×10 −13 at 0.17 s of averaging time.

DOI
10.1364/oe.512281

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We report laser frequency stabilization by the combination of modulation transfer spectroscopy and balanced detection of a relatively weak hyperfine transition of the R(158)25-0 line of molecular iodine ( 127 I 2 ), which is used as a new frequency reference for laser trapping and cooling of 174 Yb on the 1 S 0 − 3 P 1 transition. The atomic cloud is characterized by time-of-flight measurements, and an on-resonance optical depth of up to 47 is obtained. We show laser noise reduction and characterize the short-term laser frequency instability by the Allan deviation of the laser fractional frequency. The minimum measured value is 3.9 ×10 −13 at 0.17 s of averaging time.
We present absolute frequency measurements of a laser stabilized using an offset sideband locking technique on the P(49)24-1 rovibrational transition of 127 I 2 near 556 nm. The P(49)24-1 transition is offset by 4.8 GHz from the intercombination transition of 171 Yb. A dual-tone electro-optical modulator is employed to bridge this frequency gap, enabling frequency stabilization of the 556 nm laser near the Yb transition, achieving a fractional frequency stability of 1.2 × 10 −11 at one second. We thoroughly characterize the frequency shifts associated with this locking scheme, with typical systematic effects fractional uncertainties of 9 × 10 −12 .
The ground-state hyperfine transitions of trapped clouds of 9Be+, 201Hg+, and 171Yb ions have been made control microwave oscillators.1-5 The frequency stability of these atomic clocks exceeds that of a primary Cs frequency standard in the short-term regime and that of a hydrogen maser for long times. Systematic perturbations derive from the members of the cloud being placed in an inhomogeneous field and showing residual motion. A single cold ion kept in the field node of an electrodynamic trap lacks these perturbations. The precise control of a standard frequency requires a narrow and weak transition whose resonance can be hardly detected by observation of the fluorescence on this line.
Optical manipulation of Ba+ ions is performed mainly by a 493 nm laser for the S1/2−P1/2 transition and a 650 nm laser for the P1/2−D3/2 transition. Because the branching ratio between the 493 and 650 nm transitions of a single Ba+ ion is comparable, stabilization systems of both lasers are equally important for Doppler cooling, sub-Doppler cooling, optical pumping, and state detection. The stabilization system of a 493 nm laser to an absolute Te2 reference has been well established. However, the stabilization of a 650 nm laser to the absolute reference of an atomic or molecular spectrum has not been presented before, to our knowledge. Here, we experimentally obtain the I2 spectrum near 650 nm and provide the experimental connection to the spectrum of Ba+. We present the 20 spectral lines of I2 in the range of 0.9 GHz above the resonance of the P1/2−D3/2 transition. We stabilize the 650 nm laser through the optical cavity to the lowest one among these lines, which is about 350 MHz apart, as the absolute frequency reference. Finally, we measure the frequency differences between these iodine lines and the Ba+ resonance through the fluorescence excitation spectrum with well-resolved dark states, which is in agreement with the theoretical expectation. The presented stabilization scheme enables us to perform precise experiments with Ba+ ions.
We present a high-performance laser frequency stabilization method using modulation transfer spectroscopy (MTS) on the rubidium 87 D 2 transition line. A substantial improvement of the laser frequency stability was achieved by searching for the optimal diameter and intensity settings of the probe and pump beam. The frequency instability measured from the beat frequency of two locked external cavity diode lasers (ECDLs) reached a short-term stability of 4.5 × 10 − 14 / τ and did not exceed 2 × 10 −12 until 10 5 s, which is the best performance reported thus far with a D 2 transition. The long-term stability is limited by the offset fluctuations of the baseline induced by the residual amplitude modulation (RAM), which can be further improved by reducing the current temperature variation of about 0.2 K by means of temperature stabilization or through a further reduction of the RAM.
Abstract We present a laser frequency locking scheme for the high excited transition of rubidium, which cannot be directly referenced by atomic absorption spectroscopy. Double resonance optical pumping spectroscopy and two-photon transition spectroscopy of a 5 S → 5 P → 5 D transition are obtained in a room temperature vapor cell and employed as the reference sources. An Allan deviation of 1.71 × 10 −12 at an averaging time of 2048 s with a residual frequency fluctuation of ±0.2 MHz over 7000 s is obtained by two-photon transition spectroscopy. The case of double resonance optical pumping spectroscopy presents an Allan deviation of 4.86 × 10 −12 at an averaging time of 2048 s with a residual frequency fluctuation of ±0.4 MHz over 7000 s. One distinct advantage of two-photon transition spectroscopy method is demonstrated by the analysis of the fast Fourier transform of error signal. A narrower full width at half-maximum of two-photon transition spectroscopy and a higher zero crossing slope by using a frequency modulation method lead to a better frequency stabilization. This work provides a technical basis for the laser frequency stabilization based on atomic and molecular transition spectroscopy, and it also supplies a new frequency standard for optical telecommunication applications.
We have constructed a compact and robust optical frequency standard based around iodine vapor loaded into the core of a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (HC-PCF). A 532 nm laser was frequency locked to one hyperfine component of the R(56) 32-0 (127)I(2) transition using modulation transfer spectroscopy. The stabilized laser demonstrated a frequency stability of 2.3×10(-12) at 1 s, almost an order of magnitude better than previously reported for a laser stabilized to a gas-filled HC-PCF. This limit is set by the shot noise in the detection system. We present a discussion of the current limitations to the performance and a route to improve the performance by more than an order of magnitude.