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Journal of Applied Physics

Exploring Ramsey-coherent population trapping atomic clock realized with pulsed microwave modulated laser

Jing Yang, Yuan Tian, Bozhong Tan, Peter Yun, Sihong Gu

Published Mar 7, 2014• 15 citations

Abstract

A scheme for a Ramsey-coherent population trapping (CPT) atomic clock that eliminates the acousto-optic modulator (AOM) is proposed and experimentally studied. Driven by a periodically microwave modulated current, the vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser emits a continuous beam that switches between monochromatic and multichromatic modes. Ramsey-CPT interference has been studied with this mode-switching beam. In eliminating the AOM, which is used to generate pulsed laser in conventional Ramsey-CPT atomic clock, the physics package of the proposed scheme is virtually the same as that of a conventional compact CPT atomic clock, although the resource budget for the electronics will slightly increase as a microwave switch should be added. By evaluating and comparing experimentally recorded signals from the two Ramsey-CPT schemes, the short-term frequency stability of the proposed scheme was found to be 46% better than the scheme with AOM. The experimental results suggest that the implementation of a compact Ramsey-CPT atomic clock promises better frequency stability.

DOI: 10.1063/1.4867915

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A scheme for a Ramsey-coherent population trapping (CPT) atomic clock that eliminates the acousto-optic modulator (AOM) is proposed and experimentally studied. Driven by a periodically microwave modulated current, the vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser emits a continuous beam that switches between monochromatic and multichromatic modes. Ramsey-CPT interference has been studied with this mode-switching beam. In eliminating the AOM, which is used to generate pulsed laser in conventional Ramsey-CPT atomic clock, the physics package of the proposed scheme is virtually the same as that of a conventional compact CPT atomic clock, although the resource budget for the electronics will slightly increase as a microwave switch should be added. By evaluating and comparing experimentally recorded signals from the two Ramsey-CPT schemes, the short-term frequency stability of the proposed scheme was found to be 46% better than the scheme with AOM. The experimental results suggest that the implementation of a compact Ramsey-CPT atomic clock promises better frequency stability.

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A scheme is investigated for a coherent population trapping (CPT) atomic clock, wherein the polarization of a beam produced by a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser is converted to an elliptically polarized beam that interacts with alkali atoms, where the CPT signal is extracted by differentially detecting the magneto-optically rotated light within the transmitted beam. The scheme eliminates the spin-polarized trap state of the atoms and the unwanted background signal, and suppresses in the CPT signal the noise converted from the laser noise. This result reveals the promise of this scheme for realizing a compact CPT atomic clock possessing a significantly improved frequency stability compared to current compact CPT atomic clock devices, coupled with similar power consumption, volume, and cost therewith.

We propose a pulse excitation method of coherent population trapping (CPT) with a liquid crystal optical modulator. Since liquid crystals enable reductions in size, weight, cost, and power consumption compared with acousto-optical modulators (AOMs), our method is suitable for chip-scale atomic clocks (CSACs). Experiments showed that pulse excitation with a liquid crystal modulator can narrow the CPT resonance linewidth and reduce the light shift effect using a 87Rb gas cell and the D1-line vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). The CPT resonance linewidth and light shift sensitivity were less than one-eighth and one-third those for continuous excitation, respectively. They also showed that our method is comparable to that based on an AOM.

Microcell CPT atomic clock using laser current-actuated power modulation with 10

^{-12}

range stability at 1 day

We present a coherent-population trapping (CPT) microcell atomic clock using symmetric auto-balanced Ramsey (SABR) spectroscopy. The pulsed SABR sequence is applied through direct current-based power modulation of the vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser, eliminating the need for an external optical shutter and enabling compatibility with fully-integrated clocks. The sequence is controlled by a single FPGA-based digital electronics board. A key aspect of proper clock operation was the implementation of a real-time tracking of the atomic signal detection window. The clock frequency dependence on laser power, microwave power, laser frequency, and timing of the detection window has been measured, obtaining sensitivity coefficients lower than those obtained with Ramsey-CPT spectroscopy. The Allan deviation of the SABR-CPT clock, based on a microfabricated cell with low-permeation glass windows, is 1.1~

\times

~10

^{-9}

at 1~s and averages down to the low 10

^{-12}

range at 1 day integration time. These results pave the way towards the development of Ramsey-CPT chip-scale atomic clocks with enhanced timekeeping performances.

We propose a coherent population trapping (CPT) pulsed-excitation method based on direct drive-current modulation of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting LASER for miniature atomic clocks (MACs). Because our method needs only a simple device configuration without optical external modulators, it is suitable for MACs, including chip-scale atomic-clocks. Reducing the size, cost, and power consumption is also possible. Additionally, we report on experimental results for Ramsey-CPT fringes excited using the proposed method.