Developing a narrow-line laser spectrometer based on a tunable continuous-wave dye laser
- Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071 (China)
- College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093 (China)
We present the development of a dye-laser-based spectrometer operating at 550–600 nm. The spectrometer will be used to detect an ultra-narrow clock transition ({sup 1}S{sub 0}-{sup 3}P{sub 0}) in an Ytterbium optical lattice clock and perform high-resolution spectroscopy of iodine molecules trapped in the sub-nanometer channels of zeolite crystal (AlPO{sub 4}-11). Two-stage Pound-Drever-Hall frequency stabilization is implemented on the tunable continuous-wave dye laser to obtain a reliable operation and provide stable laser radiations with two different spectral linewidths. In the first-stage frequency locking, a compact home-built intracavity electro-optic modulator is adopted for suppressing fast frequency noise. With an acquisition time of 0.1 s the 670-kHz linewidth of the free-running dye laser is reduced to 2 kHz when locked to a pre-stabilization optical cavity with a finesse of 1170. When the pre-stabilized laser is locked to a high-finesse optical cavity, a linewidth of 1.4 Hz (2 s) is observed and the frequency stability is 3.7 × 10{sup −15} (3 s). We also measure and analyze the individual noise contributions such as those from residual amplitude modulation and electronic noise. The ongoing upgrades include improving long-term frequency stability at time scales from 10 to 100 s and implementing continuous frequency scan across 10 GHz with radio-frequency precision.
- OSTI ID:
- 22314689
- Journal Information:
- Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 85, Issue 8; Other Information: (c) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0034-6748
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Silicon nitride stress-optic microresonator modulator for optical control applications
A compact ultranarrow high-power laser system for experiments with 578 nm ytterbium clock transition