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Optics Letters

Sub-Doppler bandwidth atomic optical filter

Lincoln D. Turner, V. Karaganov, P. J. O. Teubner, Robert E Scholten

Published Apr 1, 2002• 41 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate what is to our knowledge the first atomic optical filter that uses velocity selection to achieve a passband width that is less than the Doppler width of the filtering transition. A narrow-linewidth pump laser is used to induce circular birefringence in a narrow velocity class of atoms in a dense potassium vapor for 694-nm light resonant with the 4P(3/2)-6S(1/2) transition. The filter displays a single 170-MHz passband at a peak transmittance of 9.5%. The bandwidth is an order of magnitude lower than that of previously demonstrated atomic optical filters.

DOI
10.1364/ol.27.000500

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We demonstrate a nonlinear optical filter with ultranarrow bandwidth in cesium vapor. The optical filter operates on the 6S(1/2)→7P(3/2) transition at 455 nm. The single peak transmission at the 6S(1/2), F=4→7P(31/2), F'=5 transition is 9.7% with a bandwidth of 6.2 MHz, whereas at the 6S(1/2), F=3→7P(3/2), F'=2, 3 (cross-over) transition is 6.1% with a bandwidth of 3.9 MHz. The bandwidth approaching the natural linewidth is improved at least two orders of magnitude compared with conventional Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filters. This technique can also be applied to other alkali atoms.
Using laser cooling technology, we demonstrate an ultranarrow-bandwidth Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF) which operates on the52S1/25^{2}\text{S}_{1/2}52S1/2​(F=2F = 2F=2) to62P3/26^{2}\text{P}_{3/2}62P3/2​(F′=3F' = 3F′=3) transition at 420 nm based on cold 87Rb atoms. The filter achieves a single 2.7(2) MHz passband at a peak transmission of 3.2%. It is the narrowest bandwidth FADOF known at present, as the influence of Doppler broadening on the bandwidth narrowing of FADOF is effectively overcome by cold atoms. This ultranarrow-bandwidth FADOF has a figure of merit (FOM) value of 11.85 GHz−1, which is seven times larger than the largest FOM achieved by thermal vapor atomic optical filter published to date. Furthermore, the scheme can be extended to almost all kinds of atomic optical filters and may find applications in active Faraday optical frequency standard and self-stabilizing laser.
Atomic optical filters such as Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filters (FADOFs) or similar technologies can achieve very narrow optical bandwidth close to the scale of atomic linewidth, which can be greatly reduced in cold atoms. However, limited by the number of cold atoms and the size of the cold atomic cloud, the number of atoms interacting with the laser is reduced, and the transmission remains as low as 2%. In this work, we introduce the optical pumping into the cold atomic optical filter to solve this problem. Circular polarized optical pumping can produce polarization of the atomic ensemble and induce dichromatic as well as the Faraday rotation. We demonstrate a cold-atom optical filter which operates on the 87Rb 52S1/2 (F=2) to 52P3/2 (F′=2) transition at 780 nm. The filter achieves an ultranarrow bandwidth of 6.6(4) MHz, and its peak transmission is 15.6%, which is nearly 14 times higher than that of the cold-atom optical filter realized by Faraday magneto-optic effect. This scheme can be extended to almost all kinds of atomic optical filters and may find applications in self-stabilizing laser and active optical clock.