Spectral properties of iodine cells for laser standards

Abstract

The main aim of this work is oriented towards preparation and spectral properties evaluation of optical frequency references for laser standards – molecular iodine cells. These references represent the crucial part of setups for practical realization of the meter unit – highly stable laser standards. Furthermore, not only in the most precise laboratory instruments, but also in less demanding interferometric measuring setups the frequency stabilization of the lasers throught the absorption in suitable media ensure the direct traceability to the fundamental standard of length. A set of absorption cells filled with different amounts of molecular iodine (different saturation pressure point of absorption media) was prepared and an agreement between expected and resulting spectral properties of these cells was observed and evaluated. The usage of borosilicate glass instead of common fused silica as a material for cells bodies represents an approach to simplify the manufacturing technology process and also reduces the overall cell costs. A great care must be taken to control/avoid the risk of absorption media contamination by impurities releasing from the cell walls. We introduce an iodine purity and spectral properties evaluation method based on measurement of linewidth of the hyperfine transitions. The proposed method was used for verification of great iodine purity of manufactured cells by comparison of spectral properties with cells traditionally made of fused silica glass with well known iodine purity. The results confirmed a great potential of proposed approaches.