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Physica Scripta

An optimized optical phase-locked loop with high bandwidth and stability for Raman laser generation

Rui Xu, Fangjun Qin, Zhichao Ding, Hao Chen, An Li, Dong Yi Li, Jiaqing Sun, Haibo Zhang, Chenxi Ge

Published May 8, 2025• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Among the existing techniques for Raman laser preparation, optical phase-locked loops (OPLLs) are widely used in quantum precision measurements due to their high regulation accuracy and low phase noise. Aiming at the problems of limited adjustment range and insufficient stability of the current OPLL, this paper designs an OPLL by optimizing the operating points with a bias voltage. Performance tests show that, the tuning range of the optimized OPLL is 2 GHz to 9 GHz. This wide frequency cover can produce Raman laser for both 87Rb and 85Rb atomic gravimeters. It can also be used to simplify the optical path in experiments to test the equivalence principle. The optimized OPLL has a long-term phase-locking capability. For integration times of 1 s and 1000 s, the relative Allan’s variance is 1.6 × 10−11 and 5.2 × 10−13, respectively.

DOI
10.1088/1402-4896/add65f

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Abstract Among the existing techniques for Raman laser preparation, optical phase-locked loops (OPLLs) are widely used in quantum precision measurements due to their high regulation accuracy and low phase noise. Aiming at the problems of limited adjustment range and insufficient stability of the current OPLL, this paper designs an OPLL by optimizing the operating points with a bias voltage. Performance tests show that, the tuning range of the optimized OPLL is 2 GHz to 9 GHz. This wide frequency cover can produce Raman laser for both 87Rb and 85Rb atomic gravimeters. It can also be used to simplify the optical path in experiments to test the equivalence principle. The optimized OPLL has a long-term phase-locking capability. For integration times of 1 s and 1000 s, the relative Allan’s variance is 1.6 × 10−11 and 5.2 × 10−13, respectively.
In the measurement process of cold atomic gravimeters, Raman laser plays an important role both in the state preparation stage and in the atomic interference stage. This paper discusses Raman laser generation techniques. The optical phase-locked loop (OPLL) method and the electro-optical modulation (EOM) method are compared from a theoretical point of view. An OPLL system and an EOM system were constructed separately. The two schemes were tested in terms of linewidth, phase noise and long-term stability. The experimental results were analyzed and discussed. Based on the results, recommendations are given for the selection of Raman laser schemes under different scenarios.
With the optical phase lock loop (OPLL) we made, we can achieve phase locking at frequency differences ranging from 0.5GHz to 7.5 GHz. This OPLL is fully applicable in atomic physics experiments, mostly in coherent lasers frequency locking. Two kinds of modulation modes were brought to ensure the frequency range and precision: the fast feedback current as the injection current and the slow feedback current to adjust the piezo-electric transducer. This device has been put into an optical lattice platform to lock a laser used for cooling and trapping atoms. The beat signal has a -3dB band width of 1Hz at 6.834GHz, corresponding to the hyperfine splitting of the ground state 87Rb atom.
A highly digital optical phase-locked loop (OPLL) is designed and implemented to generate phase-coherent lasers in quantum optics. All the controlling circuit in this OPLL are implemented in a single field programmable gate array (FPGA) chip. Pipeline and parallelism technology have been adapted in PID controller. Especially, an equivalent 3.5 GHz high speed clock and twisted ring counter have been integrated in the most crucial part. This OPLL has the narrow beat note line width below 1 Hz, residual mean-square phase error of 0.05 rad2and transition time of 100 μs under 10 MHz frequency step.
The technology of generating Raman laser is not only an important research content in the field of quantum precision measurement, but also a core technology of quantum inertial sensors such as cold atom gravimeter, gyroscope. For 87Rb atoms, two 780-nm lasers with a frequency difference of 6.834 GHz and a stable phase are needed to generate Raman light. Raman lasers can be generated by optical phase-locked loops of two 780-nm narrow linewidth external cavity tunable semiconductor lasers (ECDL). But the system thus developed is complicated in structure and very poor in environmental adaptability. The other method to generate Raman laser is based on intracavity 1560-nm laser with frequency doubling and electro-optic modulation technology. This system is simple in structure and strong in environmental adaptability, but it will introduce sideband effects and cannot achieve phase lock due to the limit by the linewidth and feedback bandwidth performance of the laser. In view of this, based on two new 1560-nm external cavity lasers and a home-made phase-locked circuit, in this paper the phase lock of the laser is achieved, and a Raman laser with low phase noise is obtained. The phase noise of beat note signal is as low as –95 dBc/Hz at the Fourier frequency in a range from 1 kHz to 10 kHz. A comparison of this system with the phase-locked performance of the 780-nm dual laser and the hybrid dual laser shows that this scheme has a slight advantage. In addition, the effect of the phase-locking performance on the phase noise of the cold atom interferometer through the method of piecewise integration is analyzed in this work. The experimental results given in this work provide a scheme for developing a miniaturized Raman optical system suitable for external fields.
Phase-coherent multi-tone lasers play a critical role in atomic, molecular, and optical physics.Among them, the Raman opeartion laser for manipulating atomic hyperfine qubits requires gigahertz bandwidth and low phase noise to retain long-term coherence.Raman operation lasers generated by directly modulated and frequency-multipled infrared lasers are compact and stable but lack feedback control to actively suppress the phase noise, which limits their performance in practical applications.In this work, we employ a fiber electro-optical modulator driven by a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) to modulate a monochromatic laser and employ a second-harmonic generation process to convert it to the visible domain, where the beat note of the Raman operation laser is stabilized by controlling the output frequency of VCO with a digital phase-locked loop (PLL).The low-frequency phase noise is effectively suppressed compared to the scheme without active feedback and it reaches -80 dBc=Hz@5 kHz with a 20 kHz loop bandwidth.Furthermore, this compact and robust scheme effectively reduces the system's complexity and cost, which is promising for extensive application in atomic, molecular, and optical physics.