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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Miniature atomic clock for space applications

Lute Maleki, Anatoliy A. Savchenkov, Wei Ge Liang, Danny Eliyahu, Vladimir S. Ilchenko, Elijah Dale, Andrey B. Matsko

Published Sep 1, 2015• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This paper presents a novel architecture for a high performance atomic clock based on the use of miniature optical whispering gallery mode (WGM) resonators. Following the approach of stabilizing a laser local oscillator to an optical transition in an atom or ion, as used in advanced atomic clock, a semiconductor laser is used for stabilization to the D1 line of Rb atoms, held in a small vapor cell. The laser is self-injection locked to a WGM resonator to reduce its linewidth. To produce the RF output of the clock, a second WGM resonator excited with a second cw semiconductor laser produces an optical frequency comb that is demodulated on a fast photodiode. Locking the resonator that generates the frequency comb to the laser stabilized to the Rb transition transfers the stability of the atomic transition to the RF output of the clock. In this way, a miniature all-optical atomic clock is realized. Details of the operation of the clock and application of the architecture to other atomic systems, such as a ytterbium ion, will be described.

DOI
10.1117/12.2189218

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This paper presents a novel architecture for a high performance atomic clock based on the use of miniature optical whispering gallery mode (WGM) resonators. Following the approach of stabilizing a laser local oscillator to an optical transition in an atom or ion, as used in advanced atomic clock, a semiconductor laser is used for stabilization to the D1 line of Rb atoms, held in a small vapor cell. The laser is self-injection locked to a WGM resonator to reduce its linewidth. To produce the RF output of the clock, a second WGM resonator excited with a second cw semiconductor laser produces an optical frequency comb that is demodulated on a fast photodiode. Locking the resonator that generates the frequency comb to the laser stabilized to the Rb transition transfers the stability of the atomic transition to the RF output of the clock. In this way, a miniature all-optical atomic clock is realized. Details of the operation of the clock and application of the architecture to other atomic systems, such as a ytterbium ion, will be described.
We describe a novel architecture for realization of a miniature all-optical atomic clock. We show theoretically that a hyperparametric oscillator based on a whispering gallery mode resonator can be used as a miniature frequency divider for the clock. Such a frequency divider allows for transferring the long term frequency stability from the optical frequency domain to the RF frequency domain. We present some details for the clock that utilizes the thermally stable isoclinic point of the inhomogeneously broadened D1line of87Rb for frequency stabilization, and report on progress towards its experimental realization.
Laser-atomic oscillator is a newly developed method for simultaneously generating stable optical and electrical modulations with only a few components. It requires a semiconductor laser, a vapor cell, and maybe a few optical components. No photodetector and electronic feedback are needed. In this new system, the ground-state hyperfine coherence of alkali-metal atoms is spontaneously generated. The modulated laser light with a spectrum of a small optical comb is automatically produced, and the spacing between the comb teeth is photonically locked to the hyperfine frequency. The charge carriers in the semiconductor laser are also modulated at the hyperfine frequency. A well-designed laser-atomic oscillator can be thought as an “all-photonic clock,” a new kind of active atomic clock. The system is like an active maser in photonic version. It does not need a local oscillator and the assistance of microwave circuitry, and it consumes less power for the operation compared to passive, vapor-cell atomic clocks. Besides, laser-atomic oscillator can be very compact due to its simple structure. Recently, small or miniature atomic clocks have been considered to have many applications, and passive atomic clock is the main approach of making miniature atomic clocks. Complexity and the power consumption are still the major challenges. We believe that the technique of laser-atomic oscillator can bring some advantages in manufacturing small atomic clocks.
We report on progress in the development of an All-Optical Integrated Micro-Primary Atomic Clock (AO-IMPAC). The operattion of the clock is based on an inhomogeneously broadened rubidium optical transition used for stabilization of a Kerr optical frequency comb generated in a high-Q whispering gallery mode (WGM) microresonator. We have demonstrated the initial operation of this clock built in a physics package with dimensions 5 × 6 × 1.2 cm. The clock's long term stability approaches 3 × 10-13at about 2 × 104s integration time. The measured value is limited by the noise floor of the measurement setup.
Abstract Optical atomic clocks with compact size, reduced weight and low power consumption have broad out-of-the-lab applications such as satellite-based geo-positioning and communication engineering. Here, we propose an active optical microclock based on the lattice-trapped atoms evanescently interacting with a whispering-gallery-mode microcavity. Unlike the conventional passive clock scheme, the active operation directly produces the optical frequency standard without the need of extra laser stabilization, substantially simplifying the clock configuration. The numerical simulation illustrates that the microclock’s frequency stability reaches 1.5 × 10 − 14 at 1 s of averaging, over one order of magnitude better than the recently demonstrated chip-scale optical clock that is built upon rubidium vapor cell and also more stable than current cesium fountain clocks and hydrogen masers. Our work extends the chip-scale clocks to the active fashion, paving the way towards the on-chip quantum micro-metrology, for example, the optical frequency comparison and synchronization between multiple microclocks through frequency microcombs.
Laboratory optical atomic clocks achieve remarkable accuracy (now counted to 18 digits or more), opening possibilities to explore fundamental physics and enable new measurements. However, their size and use of bulk components prevent them from being more widely adopted in applications that require precision timing. By leveraging silicon-chip photonics for integration and to reduce component size and complexity, we demonstrate a compact optical-clock architecture. Here a semiconductor laser is stabilized to an optical transition in a microfabricated rubidium vapor cell, and a pair of interlocked Kerr-microresonator frequency combs provide fully coherent optical division of the clock laser to generate an electronic 22 GHz clock signal with a fractional frequency instability of one part in 10^(13). These results demonstrate key concepts of how to use silicon-chip devices in future portable and ultraprecise optical clocks.
Laboratory optical atomic clocks achieve remarkable accuracy (now counted to 18 digits or more), opening possibilities to explore fundamental physics and enable new measurements. However, their size and use of bulk components prevent them from being more widely adopted in applications that require precision timing. By leveraging silicon-chip photonics for integration and to reduce component size and complexity, we demonstrate a compact optical-clock architecture. Here a semiconductor laser is stabilized to an optical transition in a microfabricated rubidium vapor cell, and a pair of interlocked Kerr-microresonator frequency combs provide fully coherent optical division of the clock laser to generate an electronic 22 GHz clock signal with a fractional frequency instability of one part in 10^13. These results demonstrate key concepts of how to use silicon-chip devices in future portable and ultraprecise optical clocks.