A sub-40-mHz-linewidth laser based on a silicon single-crystal optical cavity

By T. Kessler, C. Hagemann, C. Grebing, T. Legero, U. Sterr, Fritz Riehle, Michael J. Martin, Lei Chen, Jun Ye. Nature Photonics, 2011

706 citations recorded by the source corpus.

State-of-the-art laser frequency stabilization by high-finesse optical cavities is limited fundamentally by thermal noise-induced cavity length fluctuations. We present a novel design to reduce this thermal noise limit by an order of magnitude as well as an experimental realization of this new cavity system, demonstrating the most stable oscillator of any kind to date for averaging times of 0.1–10 s. The cavity spacer and the mirror substrates are both constructed from single-crystal silicon and are operated at 124 K, where the silicon thermal expansion coefficient is zero and the mechanical loss is small. The cavity is supported in a vibration-insensitive configuration, which, together with the superior stiffness of the silicon crystal, reduces the vibration-related noise. With rigorous analysis of heterodyne beat signals among three independent stable lasers, the silicon system demonstrates a fractional frequency instability of 1 × 10−16 at short timescales and supports a laser linewidth of <40 mHz at 1.5 µm. Frequency stabilization in a high-finesse optical cavity is limited fundamentally by thermal-noise-induced cavity length fluctuations. Scientists have now developed a single-crystal silicon system that offers a fractional frequency instability of 1 × 10−16 at short timescales and supports a laser linewidth of less than 40 mHz at 1.5 µm.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4e8fc6a20f73d486b027ebc94a88578db097c6b2

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Citations in the corpus

A strontium lattice clock with 3 × 10 − 17 ?> inaccuracy and its frequency (2013, background): “Simultaneously, several groups have reduced the noise of the interrogation oscillators [29, 30], which has in turn led to significantly reduced clock instabilities [18, 19, 31]; this improved instability then allows for a very rapid and thorough investigation of systematic effects.”
Synchronization of Distant Optical Clocks at the Femtosecond Level (2015, positive): “cavity-stabilized lasers) can provide sub-femtosecond timing stability over seconds [6–10].”
RF Photonics: An Optical Microcombs’ Perspective (2018, background): “Tunable lasers are relatively noisy and have broader linewidths of ∼100 kHz, in contrast to the fixed-wavelength lasers with record linewidths of <40 mHz [178] that are typically based on a monolithic cavity without moving or mechanical components.”