Lasers with injected signals: Fluctuations and linewidths

Perry R. Rice, Xiaosong Yin, James Walden +2 more

Luigi A. Lugiato

Marek Kuś, K. Wódkiewicz, Jason A. C. Gallas

Absorptive optical bistability with a Gaussian amplitude fluctuation of the injected signal is investigated. In the limit of large laser linewidth and good stabilization of the amplitude fluctuations, a Fokker-Planck equation for absorptive optical bistability is derived. The stationary probability distribution is derived and its properties are discussed.

Pao-Lo Liu

Tatiana Nazarova, Christian Lisdat, F. Riehle +1 more

We investigate the influence of fast frequency fluctuations of an interrogation laser on the obtainable signal-to-noise ratio in Ramsey-Bordé atom interferometers. It is shown that the excessive high-frequency noise of diode lasers can degrade the signal-to-noise ratio significantly in an atom interferometer. To overcome these limitations, we have devised a low-noise light source by frequency filtering a diode laser in a high-finesse cavity and further amplifying the transmitted power by injection locking a solitary laser diode. When this laser source was used for atom interferometry with laser-cooled calcium atoms, the signal-to-noise ratio could be improved further by a factor of 3.5 compared with the use of the unfiltered 1 Hz linewidth laser source.

J H Hannay, Daniel E. Field