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Optics Express

Miniaturized calcium beam optical frequency standard using fully-sealed vacuum tube with 10^−15 instability

Haosen Shang, Xiaogang Zhang, Shengnan Zhang, Duo Pan, Haijun Chen, Jingbiao Chen

Published Nov 20, 2017• 43 citations
Publisher

Abstract

. To our knowledge, it's the first time to realize the optical frequency standard using fully-sealed vacuum tube. This work will promote the miniaturization and transportability of the optical clock based on atomic beam.
DOI
10.1364/oe.25.030459

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In this paper a small Calcium beam optical frequency standard utilizing fully-sealed Calcium beam vacuum tube owning smaller size compared with vacuum system with flanges is demonstrated. Adopting the electron shelving detection method, we detect the clock transition 657 nm saturation absorbing spectroscopy whose linewidth is 500 kHz. The instability of this small optical frequency standard is 6.8×10-14at 1 second and 1.8×10-15after 1000 seconds of averaging by comparing with another small Calcium beam optical frequency standard whose reported instability is 3.0×10-14at 1 second. The optical part of the whole system is specially designed for robustness and miniaturization.
Optical clocks have become a very important tool of investigating the characteristics of atoms and ions, for the state-of-art instability and uncertainty. While optical clocks with long running time is still a critical issue. In order to improve vacuum system design and minimize atomic beam divergence angle in optical beam clock, the resonance fluorescence signal of the atom interacting with laser is adopted to evaluate atomic beam two-dimensional distribution. The laser frequency is stabilized to atomic transition resonance frequency via absorption spectrum method. Meanwhile, the laser beam fixed on a two-dimensional displacement platform is exploited to depict the atomic beam distribution with the resonance fluorescence intensity variation corresponding to each laser incident position. The experiment is carried on the calcium beam optical clock to obtain the preliminary atomic beam distribution.
Optical clocks have become a very important tool of investigating the characteristics of atoms or ions, for the state-of-art instability and uncertainty. Increasing the running time of an optical atomic clock is one critical issue that scientists are still working on. In this paper we report the improvement of the atomic chamber of a calcium beam optical clock. By using a combination of microtubes as the nozzle, we achieved a very high atomic flux with small divergence. The resonant atomic flux is about 1×1012 to 1013 per second and the divergence is smaller than 30mrad. The experimental results show that the system is reasonable in design and meets the technical indicators.
Microwave atomic clocks have been the de facto standards for precision time and frequency metrology over the past 50 years, finding widespread use in basic scientific studies, communications, and navigation. However, with its higher operating frequency, an atomic clock based on an optical transition can be much more stable. We demonstrate an all-optical atomic clock referenced to the 1.064-petahertz transition of a single trapped 199Hg+ ion. A clockwork based on a mode-locked femtosecond laser provides output pulses at a 1-gigahertz rate that are phase-coherently locked to the optical frequency. By comparison to a laser-cooled calcium optical standard, an upper limit for the fractional frequency instability of 7 x 10(-15) is measured in 1 second of averaging-a value substantially better than that of the world's best microwave atomic clocks.