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OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 21, No. 18 / September 15, 1996

Microwave signal generation with optical injection locking

P. Bouyer, T. L. Gustavson, K. G. Haritos, and M. A. Kasevich
Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305 Received April 22, 1996 Two single-mode laser diodes have been injection locked to the 11 and 21 diffracted orders of a 4.6-GHz acousto-optical modulator. The measured locking bandwidth was 3 GHz for a locking gain of 35 dB. The microwave signal at 9.2 GHz had a measured linewidth of less than a few hertz. We used this system to drive stimulated Raman transitions between the cesium ground-state hyperfine levels. We observed Ramsey fringes and used them to characterize the microwave signal phase noise. 1996 Optical Society of America

Optical techniques for microwave signal generation have gained interest in many areas of spectroscopy,1 atomic physics,2 metrology,3 and interferometry. Stimulated Raman transitions between two groundstate hyperfine levels have recently been used for velocity selection4 and cooling at subrecoil temperatures.5 They have also been used for coherent wave-packet manipulation in an atom interferometer.6 Achieving these stimulated Raman transitions requires two counterpropagating frequency-stabilized laser beams detuned from an optical resonance and offset by a rf hyperf ine splitting frequency. The absolute linewidth of the lasers is not important, but the relative linewidth must be small enough to drive coherent processes. Although some techniques have already been demonstrated that use heterodyne optical phase-lock loops,7 we use an original solution based on optical injection locking8 (OIL). Injection locking is a method for synchronizing a free-running oscillator to a stabilized master oscillator. It is known to permit both frequency locking of a slave oscillator and spectral purity transfer from the master to the slave oscillator. Furthermore, a phase variation in the injection beam is reproduced in the locked laser.9 This phase-locking technique has a wide frequency-locking range and a large intensitylocking gain, permitting the use of semiconductor lasers as coherent amplif iers. To use a microwave signal to manipulate cesium atomic wave packets we need to lock two high-power lasers at a frequency offset of 9.2 GHz, the cesium clock frequency. To accomplish this we use a highfrequency acousto-optical modulator (AOM). The master laser passes through the modulator twice to yield the 11 and 21 diffracted orders. Each order is then amplif ied by OIL by one of the high-power lasers. This system provides a phase lock without the complexity involved in building an optical phase-lock loop and is more stable for mobile operations. The experimental setup is shown in Fig. 1(a). The master oscillator is a distributed Bragg ref lector laser diode (SDL-5712 from SDL, Inc.), providing as much as 100 mW of power at 852 nm with a linewidth of 3 MHz. The laser output is collimated with an antiref lection-coated microlens. Optical isolators are used to avoid undesired feedback. Their insertion loss is 0.8 dB and the isolation loss is $ 70 dB, leaving
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80 mW of usable power. The beam is then focused to an 80-mm waist onto a GaP acousto-optical frequency shifter.10 This modulator is driven by 1 W of rf at 4.6 GHz, half of the cesium-clock frequency. The diffracted order is def lected by 56 with an efficiency of 0.04%, leading to 30 mW of usable power. The nondiffracted beam (0 order) is then collimated and retroref lected through the modulator. With this method we obtain two diffracted orders (the 11 and 21 orders) with frequency offset by the cesium-clock frequency of 9.2 GHz. As potential vibrations of the retroref lecting mirror and the OIL optics are a major source of phase noise, we used stable optical mounts. The two injected lasers are 150-mW cw single-mode index-guided laser diodes (SDL 5422 from SDL, Inc.) operating at 852 nm. To achieve a frequency stability better than 20 MHz, we stabilize their temperatures within 61 mK. Each beam is sent through an optical isolator. Utilizing isolators with escape windows is convenient because the injecting light can be sent through the last window. With this method more than 90% of the master oscillator is injected into the slave oscillator, and 90% of the slave oscillator light can be used, with an isolation loss of $40 dB. For each diffracted order a lens and two mirrors are used to match the transverse modes of both injecting and slave beams. A half-wave plate maximizes the injecting power through the optical isolator. We obtain longitudinal-mode wavelength matching between the master and the slave oscillators by controlling the temperature and the drive current of the injected laser. The injection locking was observed on an optical spectrum analyzer. We measured the injection bandwidth by scanning the frequency of the slave laser and monitoring its absorption through a cesium cell with the master laser tuned on resonance. We observed an injection bandwidth of 3 GHz with a 235-dB injection level. This level led to the optimal OIL conditions.11 We observed the beat note between the two slave oscillators by mixing their outputs on a fast photodiode [Fig. 1(b)]. More than 99% of the power was in the carrier at the cesium clock frequency, and the remaining 1% was in the pedestal. The linewidth of the beat note was less than 20 Hz, the resolution of the spectrum analyzer. To confirm further the high phase stability of our system, we studied Ramsey fringes12 with our cesium
1996 Optical Society of America

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tuning the frequency of the AOM on the two-photon resonance we obtained Doppler-free stimulated Raman transitions. The atoms are in jF 4 before entering the interrogation region. They pass through the first oscillating region (the Raman beams) and are put into a coherent superposition of the jF 3 and jF 4 ground states. We achieved this p 2 pulse condition by adjusting the power of each slave laser and the detuning of the master oscillator. In the next region, with no lasers, the atoms experience a free evolution of their phase and then enter the last oscillating region. We detect the atoms that did not complete the transition from jF 4 to jF 3 by using a photomultiplier tube to collect the f luorescence induced by a probe tuned on the jF 4 ! jF 0 5 resonance with a photomultiplier tube. We observed

Fig. 1. (a) Experimental apparatus. The master laser can be tuned continuously up to a few gigahertz from the cesium D2 line by adjustment of the driving current. The AOM is driven by 1 W of rf at 4.6 GHz. The rf can be tuned by 63 MHz without destroying the OIL. Antiref lection-coated anamorphic prisms are used to reduce the beams larger dimension to achieve maximum transmission through the optical isolator. ( b) Beat-note spectrum of the two injection locked oscillators [SL1 and SL2 in (a)] at twice the driving rf (9.2 GHz). The spectrum analyzer was conf igured for the 10-kHz resolution bandwidth and 64 averages.

beam apparatus. The atomic beam was collimated and then transversely cooled in a two-dimensional molasses,13,14 giving a f lux of 5 3 108 atomss with a 270-ms most-probable velocity. The atoms were then hyperfine pumped into the magnetic-field-insensitive state mF 0 before entering a 2-m-long magnetically shielded interrogation region of the vacuum chamber. The two injection-locked laser beams were expanded to 25-mm diameter and overlapped in a copropagating configuration. The beams were then sent into the chamber at each end of the interrogation region, where they intersected the atomic beam perpendicularly. By

Fig. 2. (a) Ramsey fringes for two oscillating regions separated by 2 m. The signal-to-noise ratio is 500 after a 1-s integration time. ( b) The rms phase noise at the center of the fringe pattern is consistent with the specif ied performance of the HP83721A frequency synthesizer used to drive the AOM.

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OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 21, No. 18 / September 15, 1996 2. C. J. Myatt, N. R. Newbury, and C. E. Wieman, Opt. Lett. 18, 649 (1993). 3. K. Gibble and S. Chu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 1771 (1993). 4. K. Moler, D. Weiss, M. Kasevich, and S. Chu, Phys. Rev. A 45, 342 (1992); M. Kasevich, D. S. Weiss, E. Riis, K. Moler, S. Kasapi, and S. Chu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 66, 2297 (1991). 5. M. Kasevich and S. Chu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 69, 1741 (1992). 6. M. Kasevich and S. Chu, Appl. Phys. B 54, 321 (1992). 7. G. Santarelly, A. Clairon, S. N. Lea, and G. Tino, Opt. Commun. 104, 339 (1994). 8. L. Golberg, H. F. Taylor, J. F. Weller, and D. M. Bloom, Electron. Lett. 19, 491 (1983). 9. S. Kobayashi and T. Kimura, IEEE J. Quantum Electron. QE-17, 681 (1981). 10. 4.6-GHz 852-nm frequency shifter, Model MGAPFS4.6G-852, from MVM Electronics, Inc., Melbourne, Fla. 11. The stability of an injection-locked laser was studied in J. P. Bouyer, C. Br eant, and P. Schanne, Proc. SPIE 1837, 324 (1993). For suff icient injected power the authors observed the appearance of holes inside the locking range. These holes correspond to optical power transferred to the relaxation sidebands. For high-enough power, all the optical power can be in those sidebands. As a result, the laser is no longer injection locked. 12. N. F. Ramsey, Phys. Rev. 78, 695 (1950). 13. A. Aspect, N. Vansteenkiste, R. Kaiser, H. Haberland, and M. Karrais, Chem. Phys. 145, 307 (1990). 14. P. D. Lett, W. D. Phillips, S. C. Rolston, C. E. Tanner, R. N. Watts, and C. I. Westbrook, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 6, 2084 (1989).

optical Ramsey fringes with a linewidth less than 50 Hz [Fig. 2(a)] and a signal-to-noise ratio SN 500 after 1 s of integration time. By recording the rms noise on the slope of the central fringe we conclude that the phase noise does not exceed 6 3 1026 rad2 Hz at 1 Hz and note that this noise is limited by our rf source [Fig. 2(b)]. To summarize, we have injection locked two cw single-mode index-guided laser diodes to the 11 and 21 diffracted orders of an acousto-optical frequency shifter at a frequency offset of 9.2 GHz. Such a microwave source is easy to operate and has shown good long-term stability. The injection bandwidth was measured and the low phase noise demonstrated through the observation of 50-Hz-wide Ramsey fringes. Although such a high-frequency AOM is diff icult to realize, this apparatus presents a simple and reliable way to generate a microwave signal for atomic physics experiments. It should also be of interest for f ield atom interferometry experiments, in which the significant sensitivity of optical phase-lock loop systems to vibration is a limitation. The authors acknowledge helpful discussions with A. Peters. P. Bouyer acknowledges support from Direction de la Recherche et des Etudes Techniques (contract 9381148) and the French government (Lavoiser fellowship). This research is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Office of Naval Research, and NASA. References
1. J. E. Thomas, P. R. Hemmer, S. Ezekiel, J. Leiby, R. H. Picard, and C. R. Willis, Phys. Rev. Lett. 48, 867 (1982).