Frequency instability of a miniature optically pumped cesium-beam atomic frequency standard.

Abstract

This paper proposes a miniature optically pumped cesium-beam atomic frequency standard with a volume of 38.4 l and a weight of 28 kg and examines the main factors that affect its signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Methods to improve the SNR are proposed, which improve the short-term frequency instability: installing a collimator at the exit of the cesium oven, using the beam fluorescence spectrum with the fiber-coupled output to stabilize the laser frequency, and using the 4-5 cycling transition of the cesium D2 line for the atomic detection. We also examine several frequency shifts that affect the long-term frequency instability and detail methods to reduce these shifts. At present, the frequency instability achieved by the Peking University miniature optically pumped cesium-beam frequency standard has reached 3.12×10-12/τ.