Laser with 10−13 short-term instability for compact optically pumped cesium beam atomic clock

Abstract

We realize a high-stability laser by modulation transfer spectroscopy and apply it to implement a high-performance compact optically pumped cesium beam atomic clock. Evaluated by the optical heterodyne method with two identical frequency-stabilized lasers, the frequency instability of the 852 nm laser directly referenced on thermal atoms is 2.6×10-13 at the averaging time of 5 s. Factors degrading the frequency stability of the laser are analyzed, and we will further control it to reduce the frequency noise of the laser. By comparing with a Hydrogen maser, the measured Allan deviation of the high-stability-laser-based cesium beam atomic clock is 2×10-12/τ, dropping to 1×10-14 in less than half a day of averaging time. To our knowledge, the Allan deviation of our cesium clock is better than that of any reported compact cesium beam atomic clocks at the averaging time of half-day. The high-performance atomic clock can promote the fields in metrology and timekeeping, and the high-stability laser additionally possesses great potential to be a compact optical frequency standard.