A portable laser system for high precision atom interferometry experiments
Abstract
We present a modular rack-mounted laser system for the cooling and manipulation of neutral rubidium atoms which has been developed for a portable gravimeter based on atom interferometry that will be capable of performing high precision gravity measurements directly at sites of geophysical interest. This laser system is constructed in a compact and mobile design so that it can be transported to different locations, yet it still offers improvements over many conventional laboratory-based laser systems. Our system is contained in a standard 19" rack and emits light at five different frequencies simultaneously on up to 12 fibre ports at a total output power of 800 mW. These frequencies can be changed and switched between ports in less than a microsecond. The setup includes two phase-locked diode lasers with a phase noise spectral density of less than 1 \mu rad/sqrt(Hz) in the frequency range in which our gravimeter is most sensitive to noise. We characterize this laser system and evaluate the performance limits it imposes on an interferometer.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1007.0679,
title = {A portable laser system for high precision atom interferometry experiments},
author = {Malte Schmidt and Marco Prevedelli and Antonio Giorgini and Guglielmo M. Tino and Achim Peters},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1007.0679},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
8 pages, 11 figures; The final publication is available at http://www.springerlink.com