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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Time-interval distribution and photon-burst-correlation spectroscopy of a strontium atomic beam

Bruce A. Bushaw, Tom J. Whitaker, Bret D. Cannon, Ray A. Warner

Published Sep 1, 1985• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Photon-correlation spectroscopy, using both time-interval distribution and burst multiplicity measurements, has been used to investigate the 460.7-nm resonance line of strontium in a low-density atomic beam. A model that considers transit times and thermal velocity distributions for the interval measurements is presented and compared with experimental results. The measurements can determine detection efficiency and absolute beam densities and evaluate nonstatistical behavior such as photomultiplier afterpulsing and dark-count correlation. Photon correlation provides substantial improvements in spectroscopic measurements: linewidths less than the natural lifetime limit are observed, and suppression of Lorentzian tails reduces isotopic interferences by several orders of magnitude. Signal-to-background noise ratios are also improved, with detection limits (1-sec integration) of 10 atoms per second.

DOI
10.1364/josab.2.001547

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We present a direct lifetime measurement of the 5s5p1P15s5p{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}^{1}{P}_{1}5s5p1P1​ state of strontium using time-correlated single-photon counting of laser-induced fluorescence in a hot atomic beam. To achieve fast switch-off times and a high signal-to-noise ratio, we excite the strontium atoms with a femtosecond pulsed laser at approximately 461 nm and collect the fluorescence onto a hybrid single-photon detector. Analysis of the measured exponential decay gives a lifetime of the 1P1{}^{1}{P}_{1}1P1​ state of $\ensuremath{\tau}=(5.216\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.{006}_{\text{stat}}\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.{013}_{\text{sys}})$ ns, where all the systematic effects have been thoroughly considered.
Abstract We present a spectroscopy scheme for the 7 kHz wide 689 nm intercombination line of strontium. We rely on shelving detection, where electrons are first excited to a metastable state by the spectroscopy laser before their state is probed using the broad transition at 461 nm. As in the similar setting of calcium beam clocks, this enhances dramatically the signal strength as compared to direct saturated fluorescence or absorption spectroscopy of the narrow line. We implement shelving spectroscopy both in directed atomic beams and hot vapor cells with isotropic atomic velocities. We measure a fractional frequency instability ∼2 × 10 −12 at 1s limited by technical noise—about one order of magnitude above shot noise limitations for our experimental parameters. Our work illustrates the robustness and flexibility of a scheme that can be very easily implemented in the reference cells or ovens of most existing strontium experiments, and may find applications for low-complexity clocks.
We present a spectroscopy scheme for the 7-kHz-wide 689-nm intercombination line of strontium. We rely on shelving detection, where electrons are first excited to a metastable state by the spectroscopy laser before their state is probed using the broad transition at 461 nm. As in the similar setting of calcium beam clocks, this enhances dramatically the signal strength as compared to direct saturated fluorescence or absorption spectroscopy of the narrow line. We implement shelving spectroscopy both in directed atomic beams and hot vapor cells with isotropic atomic velocities. We measure a fractional frequency instability ∼2×10−12\sim 2 \times 10^{-12}∼2×10−12 at 1 s limited by technical noise - about one order of magnitude above shot noise limitations for our experimental parameters. Our work illustrates the robustness and flexibility of a scheme that can be very easily implemented in the reference cells or ovens of most existing strontium experiments, and may find applications for low-complexity clocks.