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Joint Conference of the European Frequency and Time Forum and IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium (EFTF/IFCS)

Optical lattice laser

Jingbiao Chen, Xuzong Chen

Published Jan 18, 2006• 36 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Atoms with narrow-linewidth transition trapped within the Lamb-Dick regime of optical lattice are proposed be used as laser gain medium to build a laser. The gain medium atoms can be the alkaline-earth species, Magnesium, Calcium, and Strontium, including Ytterbium. These atoms possess promising super-narrow optical clock transitions, but here, this clock transition is proposed to be used as the lasing transition of the output laser. This optical lattice laser with expected super-narrow linewidth is an active optical clock with high accuracy and stability.

DOI
10.1109/freq.2005.1574003

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Atoms with narrow-linewidth transition trapped within the Lamb-Dick regime of optical lattice are proposed be used as laser gain medium to build a laser. The gain medium atoms can be the alkaline-earth species, Magnesium, Calcium, and Strontium, including Ytterbium. These atoms possess promising super-narrow optical clock transitions, but here, this clock transition is proposed to be used as the lasing transition of the output laser. This optical lattice laser with expected super-narrow linewidth is an active optical clock with high accuracy and stability.
Today's narrowest linewidth lasers are limited by mirror motion in the reference optical resonator used to stabilize the laser's frequency.Recent proposals suggest that superradiant lasers based on narrow dipoleforbidden transitions in cold alkaline earth atoms could offer a way around this limitation.Such lasers operating on transitions with linewidth of order mHz are predicted to achieve output spectra orders of magnitude narrower than any currently existing laser.As a step towards this goal, we demonstrate and study a laser based on the 7.5-kHz linewidth dipole-forbidden 3 P 1 to 1 S 0 transition in laser-cooled and tightly confined 88 Sr.We can operate this laser in the bad-cavity or superradiant regime, where coherence is primarily stored in the atoms, or continuously tune to the more conventional good-cavity regime, where coherence is primarily stored in the light field.We show that the cold-atom gain medium can be repumped to achieve quasi-steady-state lasing.We also demonstrate up to an order of magnitude suppression in the sensitivity of laser frequency to changes in cavity length, verifying a key feature of the proposed narrow linewidth lasers.
We propose a new light source based on having alkaline-earth atoms in an optical lattice collectively emit photons on an ultranarrow clock transition into the mode of a high Q resonator. The resultant optical radiation has an extremely narrow linewidth in the mHz range, even smaller than that of the clock transition itself due to collective effects. A power level of order 10;{-12} W is possible, sufficient for phase locking a slave optical local oscillator. Realizing this light source has the potential to improve the stability of the best clocks by 2 orders of magnitude.
A new class of laser, which harnesses coherence in both light and atoms, is possible with ultracold alkaline-earth-metal atoms trapped in an optical lattice inside an optical cavity. Different lasing regimes, including superradiance, superradiant, and conventional lasing, are distinguished by the relative coherence stored in the atoms and in the cavity mode. We analyze the physics in two different experimentally achievable regions of the superradiant lasing regime. Our calculations confirm the narrow linewidth of superradiant lasing for the doubly forbidden clock transition ${}^{3}{P}_{0}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{}^{1}{S}_{0}$ of 87Sr^{87}\mathrm{Sr}87Sr atoms. Under strong driving of the dipole-forbidden transition ${}^{3}{P}_{1}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{}^{1}{S}_{0}$ of 88Sr^{88}\mathrm{Sr}88Sr atoms, the superradiant linewidth narrows further due to the coherent excitation of the cavity field.
The optical lattice clock develops fast in recent years, and its stability and accuracy has already surpassed the microwave fountain clock and the optical clock based on ion trap. The mercury (Hg) lattice clock has the possibility to make a breakthrough in the limitation of blackbody radiation shift for strontium (Sr) and ytterbium (Yb) lattice clock, and reach the uncertainty in E-18 level at room temperature. For the purposes of laser cooling of mercury atoms and interrogating of the clock transition from1S0state to3P0state, a high-power cooling laser at 253.7 nm and an ultra-stable Hz-level linewidth laser at 265.6 nm are required, respectively. Here, we report our development of these laser sources for a neutral Hg lattice clock.
Abstract The atomic clocks, whether operating at optical or microwave region, can be divided into two categories according to their working mode, namely the passive clocks and active clocks. The passive clocks, whose standard frequency is locked to an ultra-narrow atomic spectral line, such as laser cooled Cs beam or lattice trapped Sr atoms, depend on the spontaneous emission line. On the contrary, the active clocks, in which the atoms are used as the gain medium, are based on the stimulated emission radiation, their spectrum can be directly used as the frequency standard. Up to now, the active hydrogen maser has been the most stable microwave atomic clocks. Also, the Sr superradiant active atomic clock is prospects for a millihertz-linewidth laser. Moreover, the optical clocks are expected to surpass the performance of microwave clocks both in stability and uncertainty, since their higher working frequency. The active optical clock has the potential to improve the stability of the best clocks by 2 orders of magnitude. In this work, we introduce the development of active optical clocks, and their types is classified according to the energy-level structure of atoms for stimulated radiation.
The concept of an active optical frequency standard was proposed about 10 years ago. The idea was to use optically trapped alkaline-earth atoms as a gain medium to built an extremely narrow-line laser, whose frequency would be robust against fluctuations of the cavity length. The main challenge in the realization of this concept is the short trap lifetime of the atoms. Recently we showed, that in such a laser, neutral atoms may be replaced by charged ions in a radio-frequency (RF) Paul trap with much longer lifetime. This idea rests on two pillars: the effect of synchronization of radiating dipoles with moderate inhomogeneous broadening, and the possibility to compensate (in leading orders) micromotion-induced shifts for some ion species in specially designed traps.