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Scientific Reports

Hollow cathode lamp based Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter

Duo Pan, Xiaobo Xue, Haosen Shang, Bin Luo, Jingbiao Chen, Hong Mei Guo

Published Jul 15, 2016• 24 citations

Abstract

The Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF), which has acquired wide applications, is mainly limited to some gaseous elements and low melting-point metals before, for the restriction of the attainable atomic density. In conventional FADOF systems a high atomic density is usually achieved by thermal equilibrium at the saturated vapor pressure, hence for elements with high melting-points a high temperature is required. To avoid this restriction, we propose a scheme of FADOF based on the hollow cathode lamp (HCL), instead of atomic vapor cells. Experimental results in strontium atoms verified this scheme, where a transmission peak corresponding to the (88)Sr (5s(2))(1)S0 - (5s5p)(1)P1 transition (461 nm) is obtained, with a maximum transmittance of 62.5% and a bandwith of 1.19 GHz. The dependence of transmission on magnetic field and HCL discharge current is also studied. Since the state-of-art commercial HCLs cover about 70 elements, this scheme can greatly expand the applications of FADOFs, and the abundant atomic transitions they provide bring the HCL based FADOFs potential applications for frequency stabilization.

DOI: 10.1038/srep29882

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The Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF), which has acquired wide applications, is mainly limited to some gaseous elements and low melting-point metals before, for the restriction of the attainable atomic density. In conventional FADOF systems a high atomic density is usually achieved by thermal equilibrium at the saturated vapor pressure, hence for elements with high melting-points a high temperature is required. To avoid this restriction, we propose a scheme of FADOF based on the hollow cathode lamp (HCL), instead of atomic vapor cells. Experimental results in strontium atoms verified this scheme, where a transmission peak corresponding to the (88)Sr (5s(2))(1)S0 - (5s5p)(1)P1 transition (461 nm) is obtained, with a maximum transmittance of 62.5% and a bandwith of 1.19 GHz. The dependence of transmission on magnetic field and HCL discharge current is also studied. Since the state-of-art commercial HCLs cover about 70 elements, this scheme can greatly expand the applications of FADOFs, and the abundant atomic transitions they provide bring the HCL based FADOFs potential applications for frequency stabilization.

Using a hollow-cathode lamp (HCL) to build a Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF) is a new method to realize narrow linewidth optical filters. In contrast to other atomic optical filters based on saturated vapors, which work at a relatively high temperature to maintain the atomic density, the HCL device using sputtered particles can work at a much lower temperature. In this work, a rubidium HCL-based FADOF (HCL-FADOF) working at 780 nm is established and carefully tested. With 20 mm cathode length, the transmittance can reach 29% under 18 mA discharge current and 260 G magnetic field at room temperature, which is equivalent to the performance of a saturated vapor-based FADOF (VC-FADOF) at more than 60 ∘C. This work provides a direct comparison of the performance of the HCL-FADOF and the VC-FADOF, which is of great benefit to further studies of atomic filters at normal temperature.

We realize a Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF) operating on the88Sr (5s2)1S0-(5s5p)1P1transition, utilizing a strontium hollow cathode lamp (HCL). At the magnetic field strength of 1460 G and the HCL discharge current of 22 mA, a single transmission peak with a maximum transmission of 28.8% is obtained. The dependence of transmission on magnetic field and HCL discharge current is qualitatively studied. This demonstration will be used to build a Faraday laser, which will be applied in the Sr optical clock.

As a new, to the best of our knowledge, alternative to the saturated vapor-cell-based Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF), the FADOF based on a hollow cathode lamp (HCL-FADOF) not only enables the FADOF to work normally at room temperature without heating, but also has some new features due to the inherent characteristics of the HCL. In this Letter, we implement an HCL-FADOF operating on the rubidium D2 line and experimentally investigate the effect of ambient temperature on its performance and cold-start characteristics. Results show that the HCL-FADOF can provide excellent stability within a large temperature range, even at temperatures below 0°C. A comparison of the start performance between the HCL-FADOF and FADOF using saturated vapor cells is also provided. This work shows unique features of the HCL-FADOF in a low-temperature environment and its quick-start advantage, which provides a solid foundation for extensive applications.

Abstract A narrow linewidth Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF) with reflection configuration is achieved for the first time based on the cesium (Cs) ground state 6S1/2 to the excited state 6P3/2 transition at 852 nm. Compared with the conventional FADOF with transmission configuration, reflection-type FADOF can greatly improve the transmittance of optical filter under the same experimental parameters, because it allows signal light to go and return through the atomic vapor cell. In our experiment, peak transmittance at Cs 6S1/2 F = 4–6P3/2 transition is 81% for the reflection-type FADOF, and while 54% for the transmission-type FADOF when the temperature of Cs vapor cell and the axial magnetic field are 60 °C and 19 G. The idea of this reflection-type FADOF design has the potential to be applied to the FADOF operating between two excited states to obtain higher transmittance.

We demonstrate a Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF) operating on 5S(1/2)-6P(3/2) transition at 420 nm with a 5 cm long cell of 96.5% enriched 87Rb and measure the transmission as a function of the magnetic field and temperature. The isotope 87Rb FADOF achieves a peak transmission of 98% with a bandwidth of 2.5 GHz when the temperature of the isotope 87Rb cell is 280°C and the magnetic field is 500 G. The corresponding equivalent noise bandwidth is 5.9 GHz. The isotope 87Rb FADOF is applied to submarine communications, is used as the laser frequency stabilization for some atomic lines, and is also used as the pump laser in four-level Rb active optical clock.