Stable and ultra-stable laser systems for a mobile strontium optical clock

[摘要] This thesis presents a realisation of the most demanding laser systems for a mobile strontium optical clock.First, stable 689 nm cooling lasers are presented: an amplified semiconductor diode laser and a prototypeof the semiconductor disc laser (SDL/VECSEL). The first was stabilised to a novel miniaturised multi-laserfrequency stabilisation system that allows to stabilise all the six lasers used in the strontium optical clock. The latter was used for the first time in the second-stage cooling of strontium to obtain a cold cloud oftrapped atoms. An atomic optical clock requires a laser oscillator for interrogating the clock transition. This thesispresents the construction and discusses the performance of the cutting-edge ultra-stable interrogation lasersat 698 nm. One of the systems is a stationary system based at the University of Birmingham, with theinstability of \(5\times10^{-15}\). A mobile version of the interrogation laser is also presented and characterised inthis work. The laser reaches instability of \(8\times10^{-16}\), which is one of the best results for a mobile system.The mobile laser is a part of the space optical clock project (SOC2), in which a record-low instability for thebosonic strontium was observed of\(<4\times10^{-16}/\sqrt{\tau}\).

[发布机构] University:University of Birmingham;Department:School of Physics and Astronomy

[关键词] Q Science;QC Physics