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

Rb Vapor Cells with Low Environmental Sensitivity

C. Affolderbach, Florian Gruet, G. Mileti

Published May 12, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

SummaryWe present first characterization results on novel Rb vapor cells in view of high-performance Rb atomic clocks with reduced environmental sensitivity. For this purpose, a new two-component buffer-gas mixture is employed, in order to achieve simultaneously sufficiently low temperature coefficients of the cell with respect to the cell (volume) temperature and the cell stem temperature, respectively, as well as low sensitivity of the cell to fluctuations in the external (atmospheric) pressure, thus opening the way for state-of-the-art clock stabilities around one-day timescales without need for a vacuum enclosure. We show how a Nitrogen-Methane gas mixture can be employed for this purpose and report on first experimental results with such cells.

DOI
10.1109/eftf/ifcs64367.2025.11194525

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•Jan 1, 2013•2 citations
SummaryWe present first characterization results on novel Rb vapor cells in view of high-performance Rb atomic clocks with reduced environmental sensitivity. For this purpose, a new two-component buffer-gas mixture is employed, in order to achieve simultaneously sufficiently low temperature coefficients of the cell with respect to the cell (volume) temperature and the cell stem temperature, respectively, as well as low sensitivity of the cell to fluctuations in the external (atmospheric) pressure, thus opening the way for state-of-the-art clock stabilities around one-day timescales without need for a vacuum enclosure. We show how a Nitrogen-Methane gas mixture can be employed for this purpose and report on first experimental results with such cells.
We report on the measurement of an anomalously large temperature sensitivity of the clock frequency in a Rb cell with buffer gas. The effect is observed in a prototype of pulsed optically pumped frequency standard which allows high resolution measurements because of its frequency stability at the level 1.7 × 10(-13) for 1 s of measurement time. We attribute this phenomenon to the geometry of the interaction and to the presence in the cell of temperature inhomogeneities that may enhance the temperature sensitivity of the clock frequency via the buffer gas pressure coefficient. We also propose some solutions to reduce this unwanted effect that may limit the medium-long-term performances of high-frequency-stability vapor-cell clocks.
As is well known, the phase fluctuations of a laser can decrease the signal-to-noise ratio of a vapor-cell clock due to laser PM-to-AM conversion. In previous work, we demonstrated an easy means of eliminating this problem: use high-pressure resonance cells so that collisional dephasing keeps the atoms from following the laser's fluctuating phase. Though our phase-1 clock employing a 100 torr N2 cell had excellent short-term performance, the long-term performance left much to be desired, quite likely because the increased pressure in the resonance cell gave the clock a fairly large temperature sensitivity. Here, we discuss our progress towards a phase-2 laser-pumped Rb clock, where the temperature sensitivity will be much reduced.
We report on the characterization of Cs vapor microfabricated cells filled with a Ne-He buffer gas mixture using coherent population trapping (CPT) spectroscopy. The temperature dependence of the Cs clock frequency is found to be canceled at the first order around a so-called inversion temperature higher than 80°C whose value depends on the buffer gas partial pressure ratio. This buffer gas mixture could be well-adapted for the development of miniature atomic clocks devoted to be used in specific applications such as defense and avionic systems with high operating temperature environment (typically higher than 85°C). This solution suggests an alternative to buffer gas mixtures generally used in optically-pumped vapor cell atomic clocks.
We demonstrate wafer-scale fabrication of temperature-compensated alkali vapor cells using a mixture of Ar and N2 buffer gases. The temperature coefficient of the fractional frequency shift of the hyperfine clock resonance is reduced from a typical value of ≈30×10−9/ K for cells containing pure N2 to below ≈3×10−9/ K for the buffer gas mixture. This result is an important step toward the mass production of temperature-compensated atomic vapor cell-based devices such as chip-scale atomic clocks.
We report the fabrication of a micro vapor cell which has Rb and Ne inside with internal volumes of several millimeters, which is the key component of chip-scale atomic devices like clocks and magnetometers. The cells were filled with Ne at a controlled pressure as the buffer gas by using glass-silicon anodic bonding techniques and dispenser pills of SAES Getters. And a special two-step bonding method was taken to avoid breakdown caused by the buffer gas and to secure the quality of the bonding. We also built an optical measuring system and measured the coherent population trapping (CPT) resonance of85Rb D1 line with a linewidth below 2.0 kHz and a contrast about 1.1%. Zeeman spectrum for CPT resonance was also detected in these microcells. These results show that these vapor cells are capable to be used in atomic clocks or magnetometers.
This thesis presents experimental studies on continuous-wave (CW) laser-microwave double-resonance (DR) spectroscopy and metrology in rubidium (87Rb) vapor cells in view of new high-performance, compact Rb-cell atomic clocks. The Rb vapor cell is confined inside a magnetron-type cavity microwave resonator (MWR). The CW DR spectroscopy involves two resonant electromagnetic fields that are operated simultaneously to interrogate the atoms - the optical field to polarize the atoms by optical pumping, and the microwave field to drive the ground-state hyperfine clock transition that serves as an atomic frequency reference. Details on characterization of compact laser heads and microwave synthesizers used in this work are presented. The vapor cell standards are useful in our everyday lives for applications ranging from telecommunications, navigation, metrology etc. In view of improving the performances of the Rb cell standards, two different clock approaches were studied in detail: The first one is on use of vapor cells (1.4 cm3) whose inner walls are coated with anti-relaxation material. A first ever wall-coated cell clock was demonstrated with good short-term frequency stability. The medium- to long-term stability was found to be limited by the temperature coefficient (TC) of the coating material itself. This work gave the insight to important features to be considered in future anti-relaxation coating materials for atomic standards. The second novel approach involves using a bigger cell (12 cm3) within a newly developed, improved MWR towards a high-performance atomic standard. Adopting a larger cell gives a higher atomic Q-factor signal that improves the short-term clock stability. In this approach, the cell was filled with 87Rb and buffer gases. With this clock, we demonstrate the state-of-the-art short-term stability of <1.4×10−13 τ−1/2. Metrological quantitative measurements on parameters influencing the medium- to long-term stability were studied in view of next generation satellite navigation systems that demand a stability level of <1×10−14 at 10 4 s (equivalent to <1 ns/day). The potential of short-term stability and understanding of the limiting factors on medium- to long-term time scales demonstrated in this study pave the way for future work towards the commercialization of high-performance Rb atomic clocks for a variety of applications.