A Hertz-Linewidth Ultrastable Diode Laser System for Clock Transition Detection of Strontium Atoms

Abstract

The frequencies of two 698 nm external cavity diode lasers (ECDLs) are locked separately to two independently located ultrahigh finesse optical resonant cavities with the Pound—Drever—Hall technique. The linewidth of each ECDL is measured to be ∼4.6 Hz by their beating and the fractional frequency stability below 5 × 10−15 between 1 s to 10 s averaging time. Another 698 nm laser diode is injection locked to one of the cavity-stabilized ECDLs with a fixed frequency offset for power amplification while maintaining its linewidth and frequency characteristics. The frequency drift is ∼1 Hz/s measured by a femtosecond optical frequency comb based on erbium fiber. The output of the injection slave laser is delivered to the magneto-optical trap of a Sr optical clock through a 10-m-long single mode polarization maintaining fiber with an active fiber noise cancelation technique to detect the clock transition of Sr atoms.