Long-term carrier-envelope-phase stabilized fiber-bulk hybrid laser with millihertz linewidth and 50 W average power

Long-term carrier-envelope-phase stabilization was demonstrated in high-power large-modearea fiber chirped-pulse spectral fraction amplification at 1030 nm of a broadband femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser. The carrier enveloped phase was stably controlled with the maximum average power up to 50 W by pre-compensating the carrier-envelope phase changes in the high-power fiber amplifiers. The locked in loop and out of loop frequency fluctuation was measured to be 1.44 and 46 mHz within half an hour. The locked carrier-frequency exhibited an in loop and out of loop beat signal linewidth of 1.66 and 2.27 mHz, accordingly accumulated phase jitter was estimated to be 0.22 and 0.73 rad, respectively, with the integration range from 10 mHz to 100 kHz. The phase stabilization was measured to change little as the output power increased, confirming negligible amplitude-to-phase noise conversions in the linear high-power fiber chirped pulse amplification.     

Optical clock sources model based on two-section distributed feedback laser with shift-layer

We propose a numerical model, including modulation transform function and self-sustained pulsation condition, to estimate the self-sustained pulsation frequency, matched to the measured pulsation frequency, which considers the structure factors in a two-section distributed feedback laser with a thin shift-layer.     

光钟

时间标准的研究在人类生活和科学探索中有着举足轻重的地位.文章简要介绍了时间的基本单位“秒”定义的几次重要发展与变迁,重点介绍了光钟的工作原理、关键部件、研究进展和光钟对“秒”定义未来发展的重要性.     

Optical clock with ultracold neutral atoms

We demonstrate how to realize an optical clock with neutral atoms that is competitive to the currently best single ion optical clocks in accuracy and superior in stability. Using ultracold atoms in a Ca optical frequency standard, we show how to reduce the relative uncertainty to below 10(-15). We observed atom interferences for stabilization of the laser to the clock transition with a visibility of 0.36, which is 70% of the ultimate limit achievable with atoms at rest. A novel scheme was applied to detect these atom interferences with the prospect to reach the quantum projection noise limit at an exceptional low instability of 4 x 10(-17) in 1 s.     

Optical clock distribution with a compact free space interconnect system

Optical clock signal distribution has been widely discussed to be an attractive way to reduce the clock skew in high-speed digital systems. For short interconnect lengths, especially for chip level clock distribution, free space systems using diffractive optical elements (DOEs) have specific advantages. The optoelectronic pathway described in this paper consists of a GaAs laser diode, a microetched silicon mirror, a faceted diffractive element and four silicon photodiodes hybridized to a (dummy) silicon chip. The key element of the clock distribution demonstrator is the diffractive element which matches setup requirements like compactness, off-axis geometry and use of an unshaped laser beam. The whole setup meets the demands of alignment accuracy in an excellent way. This is achieved by the very good imaging characteristic of the DOE and by an alignment technique based on precision mounting of micromachined silicon components. The system was tested with clock rates up to 2.5 GHz, the cut-off frequency is 350 MHz.     

Optical source linewidth criteria for heterodyne communication systems with PSK modulation

The performance of an optical heterodyne communication system is analysed for the cases of phase-shift keying (PSK) with synchronous electrical demodulation and differential PSK with non-synchronous demodulation. The combined effect on the system performance from the shot noise, quantum phase noise of the optical sources and the pulse shaping are considered. From the results, criteria are given for the maximum linewidth of the transmit and local optical sources to satisfy a given degradation in the optical receiver sensitivity.     

Optical clock and ultracold collisions with trapped strontium atoms

With microkelvin neutral strontium atoms confined in an optical lattice, we have achieved a fractional resolution of better than 5×10^–15 on the ¹ S ₀–³ P ₀ doubly forbidden ⁸⁷Sr clock transition at 698 nm. Measurements of the clock line shifts as a function of experimental parameters indicate that the fractional uncertainties due to systematic shifts could be reduced below 10^–15. The ultrahigh spectral resolution permitted resolving the nuclear spin states of the clock transition at small magnetic fields, leading to measurements of the ³ P ₀ magnetic moment and metastable lifetime. In addition, photoassociation spectroscopy was performed on the narrow ¹ S ₀–³ P ₁ transition of ⁸⁸Sr, revealing the least-bound state, and showing promise for efficient optical tuning of the ground state scattering length and production of cold molecules.     

Optical state selection process with optical pumping in a cesium atomic fountain clock

We propose and realize a new optical state selection method on a cesium atomic fountain clock by applying a two-laser 3-3' optical pumping configuration to spin polarize atoms. The atoms are prepared in |F=3, m_F=0> clock state with optical pumping directly after being launched up, followed by a pushing beam to push away the atoms remaining in the |F=4> state. With a state selection efficiency exceeding 92%, this optical method can substitute the traditional microwave state selection, and helps to develop a more compact physical package. A Ramsey fringe has been achieved with this optical state selection method, and a contrast of 90% is obtained with a full width half maximum of 0.92 Hz. The short-term frequency stability of 6.8×10^-14 (τ/s)^-1/2 is acquired. In addition, the number of detected atoms is increased by a factor of 1.7 with the optical state selection.     

Optical clock distribution for multichip module

We propose an optical H-tree structure to distribute a clock signal onto 16 electronic chips at 1 Gb/s for a clock skew and timing jitter of less than 100 ps. Fabrication steps and performance results are presented.     

Non-collinear phase-matching sum-frequency generation based on boundary total reflection in bulk KDP

Collinear phase-matching of sum-frequency generation(SFG) has been studied thoroughly previously, while non-collinear schemes are sometimes more flexible in application. However, this phase-matching type is more difficult to meet and control. We employ a convenient method to obtain harmonic generation in bulk potassium dihydrogen phosphate(KDP), using an incident wave vector and a reflected wave vector to create a triangle phase-matching relationship. With a simple, flexible set-up, we can observe 351 nm SFG, and the conversion efficiency is up to ~3.6% per reflection. Furthermore, we believe this approach has potential application value and improvement space.     

Optical lattice polarization effects on hyperpolarizability of atomic clock transitions

The light-induced frequency shift due to hyperpolarizability (i.e., terms of second-order in intensity) is studied for a forbidden optical transition, J = 0 --> J = 0. A simple universal dependence on the field ellipticity is obtained. This result allows minimization of the second-order light shift with respect to the field polarization for optical lattices operating at a magic wavelength (at which the first-order shift vanishes). We show the possibility for the existence of a magic elliptical polarization, for which the second-order frequency shift vanishes. The optimal polarization of the lattice field can be either linear, circular, or magic elliptical. The obtained results could improve the accuracy of lattice-based atomic clocks.     

UV radiation source on the basis of a nonlinear crystal with tunable 90° phase-matching

The results of investigations on the production of UV radiation sources tuned at the expense of the change of 90° phase-matching are given. At the change of a UV wavelength the 90° phase-matching is tuned at the expense of the change of dye laser frequencies. This method of tuning has special prospects for the production of supermonochromatic UV radiation sources on the basis of cw single-frequency organic dye lasers.     

Observation of linewidth narrowing due to a spontaneously generated coherence effect

We investigate the resonance fluorescence spectrum of an atomic three-level ladder system driven by two laser fields.We show that such a system emulates to a large degree a V-type atom with parallel dipole moments-the latter being a system that exhibits spontaneously generated coherence and can display ultrasharp spectral lines.We find a suitable energy scheme in a 85Rb atom and experimentally observe the narrowing of the central peak in a rubidium atomic beam.The corresponding spectrum can convincingly demonstrate the existence of spontaneously generated coherence.     

Optical encoder based on Fractional-Talbot effect using two-dimensional phase grating

This work presents an optical encoder that uses a two-dimensional phase grating. Rather than using a four-windowed scanning grating, this design with a special two-dimensional phase index grating generates two sinusoidal signals that are mutually phase-shifted by 180°. Afterwards, two large-areas, specially structured index grating generates the four 90° electrically phase-shifted scanning signals. The special design of the two-dimensional phase index grating provides more accuracy of phase-shift by using the fact that the  + 1 and −1 diffraction orders are intrinsically phase-shifted from one another by 180°. The gap between the phase index grating and mail scale was increased to three quarters of Talbot distance. The tolerance of gap between the index and main grating is 0.1 mm. The tolerance of yaw motion is ± 0.25°.     

Optical clock recovery with dual-wavelength output from degraded RZ and NRZ signals

A novel scheme to implement clock recovery from degraded signals is proposed and demonstrated based on an optoelectronic oscillator and a dual-wavelength mode-locked fiber ring laser with distributed dispersion cavity. The scheme can obtain wavelength-tunable optical clocks at two wavelengths, which is highly desirable for composite optical logic gates, cascaded optical signal processing modules or optical signal processing modules that need synchronized pulses at multiple wavelengths. In addition, the scheme can operate in both RZ and NRZ systems. The feasibility of the method is demonstrated by an experiment, in which dual-wavelength 10-GHz optical clock with a timing jitter less than 170 fs is obtained from 10-Gb/s degraded RZ and NRZ signals. The optical clocks can be tuned from 1530 to 1565 nm.     

Control of four-wave mixing phase-matching condition using the Brillouin slow-light effect in fibers

All-optical control of the phase-matching condition in four-wave mixing (FWM) processes is demonstrated using the Brillouin slow-light effect in optical fibers. A counterpropagating stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) pump has been used to control the phase velocity of the FWM pump in a wavelength conversion scheme. Both experimental results and theoretical simulations show an SBS-controlled 20 dB difference on the wavelength conversion efficiency.     

Optical interconnect based on a fibre bus

A technology which may form a powerful optical interconnection scheme based on a bus architecture is presented. It is shown that the fibre array connectors involved require alignment tolerances comparable to those of present electrical connectors. Further system flexibility can be obtained by tailoring the connector wavelength characteristics. Results of an experiment, where distributed amplification within the backplane of an optical bus was used to compensate for the power removed at the access points, are also presented. This allows a significantly higher number of output ports to be served than would be possible using a passive bus. As an example application, the feasibility of using the technology as the backplane interconnection in a card and rack system is demonstrated. Extension to a switching scheme using the multi-dimensional optical network concept is described.     

Unified description for the effect of spin freezing on ESR linewidth

We have shown that, for a number of systems which undergo a spin glass type transition, the temperature dependence of the ESR linewidth (above the freezing temperature) exhibits a single simplified form which can be roughly understood on the basis of elementary assumptions. Remarkably, the linewidth of ferromagnetic resonance observed in the surface layer of a?Y_1?xFe_x alloys exhibits the same dependence on temperature.     

Selection of odd or even harmonics by a multi-color laser field with macroscopic phase-matching

We experimentally and theoretically demonstrate that the property(odd or even) of generated harmonics can be selected by manipulating the macroscopic phase-matching conditions based on a three-color laser field. Only odd or even harmonics can be made dominant by changing the focal position and adjusting the gas pressure. These results indicate that the odd-even property of the generated harmonics can be controlled by using the multi-color laser field with macroscopic phase-matching.     

The effect of double scattering on critical fluid Rayleigh linewidth measurements

We apply recent work on the intensity correlation function of light double scattered from a system of brownian diffusing balls to the case of a fluid near the critical point. We evaluate the relative intensities and intensity correlation times of the polarized and depolarized components of the double scattered light as a function of k₀ξ. We compare these correlation times to those found for single scattering and find that the more intense polarized component of the double scattered light has a correlation time nearly equal to the singly scattered light in the critical region where $\text{k}{}_0\text{ξ ? 8}$.