Abstract
The lineshape of a microwave resonance is studied theoreti- cally and experimentally in the case of a phase-modulated RF-field and optical detection of the resonance. The calculation allows to optimize the error signal in a Rb frequency standard with respect to the modula- tion parameters. Sine-wave and square-wave modulation are examined in some detail. 1. Introduction.- The short term stability of a passive Rb standard is mainly li- mited by the signal to noise ratio of the error signal needed to lock the quartz oscillator to the atomic frequency. The error signal is usually obtained by modu- lating the phase of the RF field and detecting the corresponding modulation in the light intensity transmitted by the resonance cell. In this paper we derive analyti- cal r esults for the dependence of the error signal on modulation frequency, modula- tion depth and relaxation rates, with particular attention to the specific cases of sine-wave and square-wave modulation.
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