Ultimate stability of active optical frequency standards

authored by: Georgy A. Kazakov, Swadheen Dubey, Anna Bychek, Uwe Sterr, Marcin Bober, Michał Zawada
Abstract: Active optical frequency standards provide interesting alternatives to their passive counterparts. Particularly, such a clock alone continuously generates highly stable narrow-line laser radiation. Thus, a local oscillator is not required to keep the optical phase during a dead time between interrogations as in passive clocks, but only to boost the active clock's low output power to practically usable levels with the current state of technology. Here we investigate the spectral properties and the stability of active clocks, including homogeneous and inhomogeneous broadening effects. We find that for short averaging times the stability is limited by photon shot noise from the limited emitted laser power and at long averaging times by phase diffusion of the laser output. Operational parameters for best long-term stability were identified. Using realistic numbers for an active clock with Sr87, we find that optimized stability of σy(τ)≈4×10-18/τ[s] is achievable.
External Organisation(s): TU Wien (TUW)
University of Innsbruck
National Metrology Institute of Germany (PTB)
Nicolaus Copernicus University
Type: Article
Journal: Physical Review A
Volume: 106
ISSN: 2469-9926
Publication date: 23.11.2022
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2205.14130 (Access: Open)
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.106.053114 (Access: Open)

BibTeX

@article{d7908eea96c14c54870bc7690a3fd53a,
title = "Ultimate stability of active optical frequency standards",
abstract = "Active optical frequency standards provide interesting alternatives to their passive counterparts. Particularly, such a clock alone continuously generates highly stable narrow-line laser radiation. Thus, a local oscillator is not required to keep the optical phase during a dead time between interrogations as in passive clocks, but only to boost the active clock's low output power to practically usable levels with the current state of technology. Here we investigate the spectral properties and the stability of active clocks, including homogeneous and inhomogeneous broadening effects. We find that for short averaging times the stability is limited by photon shot noise from the limited emitted laser power and at long averaging times by phase diffusion of the laser output. Operational parameters for best long-term stability were identified. Using realistic numbers for an active clock with Sr87, we find that optimized stability of σy(τ)≈4×10-18/τ[s] is achievable.",
author = "Kazakov, {Georgy A.} and Swadheen Dubey and Anna Bychek and Uwe Sterr and Marcin Bober and Micha{\l} Zawada",
note = "Funding Information: We acknowledge support from Project 17FUN03 USOQS, which has received funding from the EMPIR programme cofinanced by the participating states and from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, by the European Union Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme Quantum Flagship Projects No. 820404 “iqClock” and No. 860579 “MoSaiQC”, by Narodowe Centrum Nauki (Quantera Q-Clocks 2017/25/Z/ST2/03021), and by SFB 1227 DQ-mat, Project-ID 274200144, within Project B02. Numerical simulations were performed with the open source frameworks DifferentialEquations.jl . The graphs were produced using the open source plotting library Matplotlib . ",
year = "2022",
month = nov,
day = "23",
doi = "10.48550/arXiv.2205.14130",
language = "English",
volume = "106",
journal = "Physical Review A",
issn = "2469-9926",
publisher = "American Physical Society",
number = "5",
}