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Review of Scientific Instruments

Frequency stabilization of an extended cavity semiconductor diode laser for chirp cooling

J. Morzinski, Parminder S. Bhatia, M. S. Shahriar

Published Oct 1, 2002• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a technique to stabilize in an atomic transition the chirping frequency of a narrow-band semiconductor diode laser. The technique is demonstrated to chirp-cool Rb85 atoms used for loading a magneto-optical trap. The stabilization process eliminates long-term fluctuations and drifts in the number of atoms caught in the trap. This is a simple, easy-to-implement, and robust method for wide range of laser cooling experiments employing frequency chirping.

DOI
10.1063/1.1502443

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We present a technique to stabilize in an atomic transition the chirping frequency of a narrow-band semiconductor diode laser. The technique is demonstrated to chirp-cool Rb85 atoms used for loading a magneto-optical trap. The stabilization process eliminates long-term fluctuations and drifts in the number of atoms caught in the trap. This is a simple, easy-to-implement, and robust method for wide range of laser cooling experiments employing frequency chirping.
We report a frequency stabilization technique of a diode laser in a Doppler-free atomic transition used for obtaining the magneto-optical trapping of Rb atoms. This technique, based on side locking to an atomic transition using a servo controller, is very simple and can be implemented straightforwardly to lock the laser at the red detuned frequency position required for laser cooling experiments. The number of trapped atoms and the temperature of the cold cloud have been determined. The effect of trapping the magnetic field on the cloud radius has also been analyzed.
We have laser cooled an atomic beam of rubidium with diode lasers and have used these slow atoms to load a magneto-optical trap. The cooling is performed with the frequency-chirp method,1,2 in which the laser's frequency is ramped linearly (by the injection currant) to maintain resonance with the decelerating atoms. Two synchronously chirped lasers are required to prevent optical hyperfine pumping of the ground state. The chirp typically covers 500 MHz in 10 ms. At the end of each ramp, the resulting velocity distribution is measured with a pulsed probe laser. By varying the end point of the chirp, we are able to obtain slow atoms with average velocities ranging from 200 to −50 m/s. The widths of the velocity distributions are measured to be approximately 40 m/s. This relatively large width results from the inherent linewidth (~30 MHz) of the free-running diode lasers used for both cooling and probing.
The use of light presure to cool and stop neutral atoms has been an area of considerable interest recently. Cooled neutral atoms are needed for a variety of interesting experiments involving neutral atom traps and ultrahigh-resolution spectroscopy. Laser cooling of sodium has previously been demonstrated using elegant but quite elaborate apparatus.1,2 These techniques employed stabilized dye lasers and a variety of additional sophisticated hardware. We have demonstrated that the frequency chirp technique of Ref. 2 can be implemented using inexpensive diode lasers and simple electronics.
The theory of cooling neutral atoms to microkelvin temperatures using a magneto optical trap will be presented. The system that is discussed uses a stabilized grating tuned diode laser that is controlled using feedback from a saturation absorption spectrophotometer to produce narrow band continuously tunable IR light for trapping rubidium atoms. A description of the design and construction of each of the components used to create the magneto optical trap will also be discussed. In the final section a description of an exceptionally accurate atomic clock that is used to measure the natural resonance frequency of laser cooled cesium atoms is also presented.