Rb vapor-cell clock demonstration with a frequency-doubled telecom laser.

Abstract

We employ a recently developed laser system, based on a low-noise telecom laser emitting around 1.56μm, to evaluate its impact on the performance of an Rb vapor-cell clock in a continuous-wave double-resonance scheme. The achieved short-term clock instability below 2.5·10-13·τ-1/2 demonstrates, for the first time, the suitability of a frequency-doubled telecom laser for this specific application. We measure and study quantitatively the impact of laser amplitude and frequency noises and of the ac Stark shift, which limit the clock frequency stability on short timescales. We also report on the detailed noise budgets and demonstrate experimentally that, under certain conditions, the short-term stability of the clock operated with the low-noise telecom laser is improved by a factor of three compared to clock operation using the direct 780-nm laser.