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SPIE Silicon Photonics

Optical phased arrays for rubidium cold atom trapping with photonic integrated circuits (Conference Presentation)

Jeremi Januszewicz, Eugenio Di Gaetano, Zack McConkey, Martin Sinclair, S. Dyer, J. P. McGilligan, Paul F. Griffin, Erling Riis, Marc Sorel, Douglas J. Paul, Kevin Francis Gallacher

Published Mar 20, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We are proposing silicon nitride optical phased arrays (OPAs) as a robust way of coupling waveguide-confined optical mode to atomic vapour in MEMS vapour cells enabling saturated absorption spectroscopy of rubidium vapour with photonic integrated circuits. We are demonstrating the design, optimisation, fabrication and performance of the OPAs targeting the D2 absorption line of 87Rb vapour.

DOI
10.1117/12.3040495

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We are proposing silicon nitride optical phased arrays (OPAs) as a robust way of coupling waveguide-confined optical mode to atomic vapour in MEMS vapour cells enabling saturated absorption spectroscopy of rubidium vapour with photonic integrated circuits. We are demonstrating the design, optimisation, fabrication and performance of the OPAs targeting the D2 absorption line of 87Rb vapour.
The integration of nanophotonic optical phased arrays (OPA) with alkali vapor cells has the potential to enhance the performance of chip-scale atomic systems by enabling novel methods for beam shaping and active alignment in atomic spectroscopy. In this work, we present the first demonstration of an OPA used for precision saturated absorption spectroscopy with a rubidium vapor cell integrated directly on the chip. The OPA, consisting of 64 emitters, expands a sub-micron waveguide mode into a >100 µm diameter free-space beam, optimized for the D2 absorption line of rubidium. We resolved the sub-Doppler hyperfine splittings in both 85Rb and 87Rb isotopes, achieving Lorentzian linewidths ranging from 25 to 40 MHz suitable for stabilizing the cooling lasers in rubidium cold atom systems.
Alkali vapours, such as rubidium, are being used extensively in several important fields of research such as slow and stored light nonlinear optics quantum computation, atomic clocks and magnetometers. Recently, there is a growing effort towards miniaturizing traditional centimetre-size vapour cells. Owing to the significant reduction in device dimensions, light–matter interactions are greatly enhanced, enabling new functionalities due to the low power threshold needed for nonlinear interactions. Here, taking advantage of the mature platform of silicon photonics, we construct an efficient and flexible platform for tailored light–vapour interactions on a chip. Specifically, we demonstrate light–matter interactions in an atomic cladding waveguide, consisting of a silicon nitride nano-waveguide core with a rubidium vapour cladding. We observe the efficient interaction of the electromagnetic guided mode with the rubidium cladding and show that due to the high confinement of the optical mode, the rubidium absorption saturates at powers in the nanowatt regime. Alkali vapours are increasingly useful in photonic research and metrology applications, and they provide a useful test bed for investigating light–matter interaction. Stern et al. integrate silicon nitride waveguides with alkali vapours to study light–matter interactions on a chip-scale platform.
We have developed a silicon nitride based photonic integrated circuit (PIC) that is responsible for the cooling, pumping and imaging of cold rubidium 87 atoms. The photonic integrated circuit consists of two chips placed next to each other and has a total area of 2x2~cm2^22. This greatly minimizes the area needed while still having all the optical control functions to create, control and measure a magneto-optical trap (MOT). The piezo electric material Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) on the PIC is employed for phase shifting a Mach-Zehnder type configuration where extinction ratios up to 50 dB and switching speeds of 1 MHz are achieved. For the first time a two and three dimensional rubidium 87 MOT is realized using an active PIC. For the three-dimensional MOT, we measure 7⋅1077\cdot 10^77⋅107 atoms with a temperature of 270~μμμK.