Power stabilization of a diode laser with an acousto-optic modulator.

Laser power fluctuations can significantly reduce the device performances in various applications. High frequency fluctuations impact the signal-to-noise ratio, while slow variations can reduce the device repeatability or accuracy. Here we report experimental investigations on the power stabilization of a diode laser with an acousto-optic modulator. In the frequency domain, the relative power noise is reduced at the level of 2.2 × 10-8 Hz-1/2 in the range 1-100 kHz. The slow variations are studied in the time domain. The relative Allan standard deviation is measured at the level of 6 × 10-7 at 100 s averaging time. Above 100 s, the instability increases and reaches 2 × 10-6 at 10 000 s.

Ramsey spectroscopy of high-contrast CPT resonances with push-pull optical pumping in Cs vapor.

We report on the detection of high-contrast and narrow Coherent Population Trapping (CPT) Ramsey fringes in a Cs vapor cell using a simple-architecture laser system. The latter allows the combination of push-pull optical pumping (PPOP) and a temporal Ramsey-like pulsed interrogation. An originality of the optics package is the use of a single Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulator (MZ EOM) both for optical sidebands generation and light switch for pulsed interaction. Typical Ramsey fringes with a linewidth of 166 Hz and a contrast of 33 % are detected in a cm-scale buffer-gas filled Cs vapor cell. This technique could be interesting for the development of high-performance and low power consumption compact vapor cell clocks based on CPT.

High contrast Ramsey fringes with coherent-population-trapping pulses in a double lambda atomic system.

We report the observation of Raman-Ramsey fringes using a double lambda scheme creating coherent population trapping in an atomic ensemble combined with pulsed optical radiations. The observation was made in a Cs vapor mixed with N2 buffer gas in a closed cell. The double lambda scheme is created with lin perpendicular lin polarized laser beams leading to higher contrast than the usual simple lambda scheme. The pulsed trapping technique leads to narrow fringe widths scaling as 1/(2T) with high contrasts which are no longer limited by the saturation effect. This technique operates in a different way from the classical Ramsey sequence: the signal is done by applying a long trapping pulse to prepare the atomic state superposition, and fringe detection is accomplished by optical transmission during a short second trapping pulse without any perturbation of the dark state.