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Chinese Optics Letters

High performance of semiconductor optical amplifier available for cold atom physics research

马千里 Qianli, 夏林 Lin Xia, 鹿博 Bo Lu, 熊伟 Wei Xiong, 张胤 Yin Zhang, 周小计 Xiaoji Zhou, Xuzong Chen

Published Jan 1, 2009• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a novel design of a compact, stable, and easy-adjustable semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) system.This SOA system is capable of providing up to 560-mW laser power at the wavelength of 852 nm.For the continuous-wave (CW) seeding laser, the amplification gain can reach 18 dB.We add amplitude modulation onto the CW laser and measure the modulation amplification between seeding and output laser.The amplification gain remains constant within the frequency range from 10 Hz to 1 MHz.The whole system could work in ultra-stable condition: for CW seeding laser, the fluctuation of output power is less than 0.33% in several hours.

DOI
10.3788/col20090701.0046

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We present a novel design of a compact, stable, and easy-adjustable semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) system.This SOA system is capable of providing up to 560-mW laser power at the wavelength of 852 nm.For the continuous-wave (CW) seeding laser, the amplification gain can reach 18 dB.We add amplitude modulation onto the CW laser and measure the modulation amplification between seeding and output laser.The amplification gain remains constant within the frequency range from 10 Hz to 1 MHz.The whole system could work in ultra-stable condition: for CW seeding laser, the fluctuation of output power is less than 0.33% in several hours.
Precise control of atomic systems has led to an array of emerging 'quantum' sensor concepts ranging from Rydberg-atom RF-electric probes to cold-atom interferometer gravimeters. Looking forward, the potential impact of these technologies hinges on their capability to be adapted from laboratory-scale experiments to compact and low-power field-deployable instruments. However, existing setups typically require a bulky and power-hungry laser and optics system (LOS) to prepare, control, and interrogate the relevant atomic system using a variety of frequency-referenced and rapidly reconfigurable laser beams. In this work, we investigate the feasibility of using semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) to replace high-power pump lasers and acousto-optic modulators within a simple atom cooling apparatus, looking forward to the ultimate goal of a space-deployable atom interferometer. We find that existing off-the-shelf SOA components operating at relevant wavelengths for Cs and Rb atom cooling (852 and 780 nm, respectively) are able to permit an attractive combination of rapid (sub-microsecond), high extinction ratio (>60-65 dB) switching while acting as power boosters prior to the atom physics package. These attributes enable a radically different, power-efficient approach to LOS design, reducing or eliminating the need for Watt-class laser amplifiers that are unsuitable for flight deployment. Building on these results, we construct a simple and compact all-semiconductor laser/amplifier LOS for atom cooling that is integrated with custom path-to-flight drive electronics. Up to 125 mW of total optical power is delivered to six fiber-coupled channels for magneto-optical-trap-based cooling of a cloud of neutral Cs atoms. The entire LOS, including reference and cooling laser subsystems and control electronics, occupies a volume of 20×20×15 cm and totals DC power consumption of around 13.5 W, and is designed in a modular format so that additional hardware for synthesizing atom interferometry beams may be added through future development efforts. These results indicate the utility of all-semiconductor laser systems for future low-power flyable atom-based sensor instruments.
In this paper,we report an optical power amplifier operating at 780 nm.The optical power amplifier is a semiconductor tapered amplifier(Eagleyard,EYP-TPA-0780-01000);the output power from the optical power amplifier is up to about 600 mW when a seeding laser beam with a power of 25 mW is injected into the amplifier.After beam shaping by lens,frequency shifting by an acousto-optical modulator(AOM) and spatial filtering by a single-mode fiber,the output power is up to 110 mW.The presented optical power amplifier may be applied into the MOT for achieving a larger number of trapped atoms.
We report high-efficiency optical amplification with near-extreme-limit gain from a diode-pumped Cs vapor cell. We used wavelength-division multiplexing to couple 852 nm pump and 895 nm seed lasers to achieve nearly overlapping spatial modes in the Cs vapor cell. We investigated the amplification factor as a function of the focal length of the lens focusing on the combined pump and seed signals and determined the optimal focal length under our experimental conditions. The small-signal amplification factor from the Cs vapor cell reached >30 dB at 240 mW pump power, and the optimal optical amplification factor per pump power was 4171/W.
Optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs) are promising to overcome the wavelength coverage and noise limitations in conventional optical amplifiers based on rare-earth doping and semiconductor gain. However, the high power requirement remains a major obstacle to the widespread use of OPAs. Integrated OPAs can in principle improve the pump efficiency with tight mode confinement; however, challenges associated with propagation loss, limited nonlinearity, and susceptibility to nanoscale fabrication imperfections prevent them from competing with conventional bulk and fiber-based OPAs. Here, we demonstrate a highly efficient integrated OPAs with continuous-wave net gain. The pump efficiency is improved by over one order of magnitude. Phase-sensitive gain of 23.5 dB is demonstrated, significantly exceeding previous integrated OPAs, using only 110 mW pump power and no cavity enhancement. This is achieved with parametric down-conversion in thin-film lithium niobate waveguides using the adapted poling technique to maintain the coherence of nonlinear interactions. Moreover, the high parametric gain exceeds fibre-chip-fibre losses, leading to appreciable net gain up to 10 dB. The 3 dB bandwidth is approximately 120 nm, covering telecommunication S-, C-, and Lbands. Quantum-limited noise performance is confirmed through the measurement of output field fluctuation below the classical limit. We further demonstrate that signalto-noise ratio in noisy optical communications can be increased by leveraging this efficient integrated OPA. Our work marks a significant step towards ideal optical amplifiers with strong amplification, high efficiency, quantum-limited noise, large bandwidth, and continuous-wave operation, unlocking new possibilities for next-generation photonic information processing systems.
We describe a fiber Raman amplifier for nanosecond and sub-nanosecond pulses centered around 1260 nm. The amplification takes place inside a 4.5-m-long polarization-maintaining phosphorus-doped fiber, pumped at 1080 nm by 3-ns-long pulses with a repetition rate of 200 kHz and up to 1.75 kW peak power. The input seed pulses are of sub-mW peak-power and minimal duration of 0.25 ns, carved out of a continuous-wave laser with sub-MHz linewidth. We obtain linearly polarized output pulses with peak powers of up to 1.4 kW, corresponding to peak-power conversion efficiency of over 80%. An ultrahigh small signal gain of 90 dB is achieved, and the signal-to-noise ratio 3 dB below the saturation power is above 20 dB. No significant temporal and spectral broadening is observed for output pulses up to 400 W peak power, and broadening at higher powers can be reduced by phase modulation of the seed pulse. Thus, nearly-transform-limited pulses with peak power up to 1 kW are obtained. Finally, we demonstrate the generation of pulses with controllable frequency chirp, pulses with variable width, and double pulses. This amplifier is thus suitable for coherent control of narrow atomic resonances, especially for the fast and coherent excitation of rubidium atoms to Rydberg states. These abilities open the way towards several important applications in quantum non-linear optics.