English

Ramsey-Bord\'e matter-wave interferometry for laser frequency stabilization at $10^{-16}$ frequency instability and below

Atomic Physics 2019-09-04 v1 Optics

Abstract

We demonstrate Ramsey-Bord\'e (RB) atom interferometry for high performance laser stabilization with fractional frequency instability <2×1016<2 \times 10^{-16} for timescales between 10 and 1000s. The RB spectroscopy laser interrogates two counterpropagating 40^{40}Ca beams on the 1^1S0_0 -- 3^3P1_1 transition at 657 nm, yielding 1.6 kHz linewidth interference fringes. Fluorescence detection of the excited state population is performed on the (4s4p) 3^3P1_1 -- (4p2^2) 3^3P0_0 transition at 431 nm. Minimal thermal shielding and no vibration isolation are used. These stability results surpass performance from other thermal atomic or molecular systems by one to two orders of magnitude, and further improvements look feasible.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1907.06774,
  title  = {Ramsey-Bord\'e matter-wave interferometry for laser frequency stabilization at $10^{-16}$ frequency instability and below},
  author = {Judith Olson and Richard W. Fox and Tara M. Fortier and Todd F. Sheerin and Roger C. Brown and Holly Leopardi and Richard E. Stoner and Chris W. Oates and Andrew D. Ludlow},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.06774},
  year   = {2019}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:21:44.213Z