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Physical Review Letters

Observation of Ramsey Fringes Using a Stimulated, Resonance Raman Transition in a Sodium Atomic Beam

John E. Thomas, Philip Hemmer, Shaoul Ezekiel, C. C. Leiby, Richard H. Picard, C. R. Willis

Published Mar 29, 1982• 219 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Ramsey fringes have been observed using a stimulated, resonance Raman transition at 1772 MHz excited by two dye lasers in a sodium atomic beam. The width of the central fringe is 650 Hz (half width at half maximum), corresponding to a 30-cm interaction-region separation. The fringes are free from laser jitter because the jitters in both laser beams are correlated. Applications to frequency standards as well as to high-resolution spectroscopy in the microwave to far-ir regions are discussed.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.48.867

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Comment on "Observation of Ramsey Fringes Using a Stimulated, Resonance Raman Transition in a Sodium Atomic Beam"

A. G. Mungall

Physical Review Letters•Feb 14, 1983•4 citations
Ramsey fringes have been observed using a stimulated, resonance Raman transition at 1772 MHz excited by two dye lasers in a sodium atomic beam. The width of the central fringe is 650 Hz (half width at half maximum), corresponding to a 30-cm interaction-region separation. The fringes are free from laser jitter because the jitters in both laser beams are correlated. Applications to frequency standards as well as to high-resolution spectroscopy in the microwave to far-ir regions are discussed.
Precision studies of stimulated-resonance Raman interactions in a sodium atomic beam were performed with emphasis on Ramsey’s separated-field excitation. Ramsey fringes were obtained for a field separation of up to 30 cm, and the data were consistent with theoretical predictions. Possible applications of this Raman interaction to clock development also were studied by stabilizing a microwave oscillator to a Raman–Ramsey fringe. The resulting oscillator stability of 1.5 × 10−11 for a 1000-sec averaging time compares favorably with commercial cesium clocks when differences in atom transit time and transition frequency are taken into consideration. Finally, potential sources of long-term frequency error, which are important for clock applications, were also partially investigated.
Ramsey spectroscopy and geometric operations on the released sodium Bose–Einstein condensates consisting of 10 7 atoms were demonstrated using copropagating two-photon stimulated Raman pulses, which were resonant to the clock transition between the F =1, m F =0 and F =2, m F =0 states of sodium atoms. The Ramsey fringes with a visibility close to 1 were obtained for two Raman pulses separated by 10 ms. A relative frequency resolution of Ramsey resonance was 6×10 -10 and a phase uncertainty of fringes was 0.06 rad for single measurement. Using resonant laser-controlled Raman pulses, geometric operations for rotations of the two-level Bose–Einstein condensates around axes 2 and 3 on the Bloch sphere were also demonstrated with a relative phase uncertainty of 4%.
It is shown theoretically that Ramsey fringes can be produced when a laser-assisted reaction of the form A2{\mathrm{A}}_{2}A2​+${\mathrm{A}}_{1}^{\ensuremath{'}}$+\ensuremath{\Elzxh}\ensuremath{\Omega}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}A1{\mathrm{A}}_{1}A1​+${\mathrm{A}}_{2}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ is driven by a pair of ultrafast radiation pulses, each of whose temporal widths is less than the duration ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{\mathrm{c}}$ of a collision between the A and A\ensuremath{'} atoms. The excitation profile of the laser-assisted collision is calculated as a function of detuning of the laser field frequency from the initial- to final-state transition frequency. For radiation pulses separated by time T, Ramsey fringes appear separated in frequency by ${\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}1}$. The modulation depth and shift of the central Ramsey fringe as a function of (T/${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{\mathrm{c}}$) provide information about the collisional interaction. Both the weak- and strong-field regions are considered and comparison with laser-assisted collisions using excitation pulses having temporal widths greater than ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{\mathrm{c}}$ is made.