Active Faraday optical frequency standards

We propose the mechanism of active Faraday optical clock, and experimentally demonstrate active Faraday optical frequency standards based on 852 nm narrow bandwidth Faraday atomic filter by the method of velocity-selective optical pumping of cesium vapor. The center frequency of the active Faraday optical frequency standards is determined by the cesium 6 $^{2}S_{1/2}$ $F$ = 4 to 6 $^{2}P_{3/2}$ $F'$ = 4 and 5 crossover transition line. The optical heterodyne beat between two similar independent setups shows that the frequency linewidth reaches 996(26) Hz, which is 5.3 $\times$ 10$^{3}$ times smaller than the natural linewidth of the cesium 852 nm transition line. The maximum emitted light power reaches 75 \upmuW. The active Faraday optical frequency standards reported here have advantages of narrow linewidth and reduced cavity pulling, which can readily be extended to other atomic transition lines of alkali and alkaline-earth metal atoms trapped in optical lattices at magic wavelengths, making it useful for new generation of optical atomic clocks.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

An optical phase-locking with large and tunable frequency difference based on vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser

We present a novel technique to phase-lock two lasers with controllable frequency difference. In our setup, one sideband of a current modulated Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSEL) is phase locked to the master laser by injection seeding, while another sideband of the VCSEL is used to phase lock the slave laser. The slave laser is therefore locked in phase with the master laser, with a frequency difference tunable up to about 35 GHz. The sideband suppression rate of the slave laser is more than 30dB at 30 uW seed power. The heterodyne spectrum between master and slave has a linewidth of less than 1 Hz. A coherent population trapping resonance of rubidium is achieved using such beams.Comment: 4 pages, 4 Encapsulated PostScript figure

Hanle detection for optical clocks

Considering the strong inhomogeneous spatial polarization and intensity distribution of spontaneous decay fluorescence due to the Hanle effect, we propose and demonstrate a universe Hanle detection configuration of electron-shelving method for optical clocks. Experimental results from Ca atomic beam optical frequency standard with 423 nm electron-shelving method show that a designed Hanle detection geometry with optimized magnetic field direction, detection laser beam propagation and polarization direction, and detector position can improve the fluorescence collection rate by more than one order of magnitude comparing with that of inefficient geometry. With the fixed 423 nm fluorescence, the improved 657 nm optical frequency standard signal intensity is presented. And the potential application of the Hanle detection geometry designed for facilitating the fluorescence collection for optical lattice clock with a limited solid angle of the fluorescence collection has been discussed. This Hanle detection configuration is also effective for ion detection in ion optical clock and quantum information experiments. Besides, a cylinder fluorescence collection structure is designed to increase the solid angle of the fluorescence collection in Ca atomic beam optical frequency standard.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Temperature dependent dynamics of photoexcited carriers of Si2Te3 nanowires

We report an optical study of the dynamics of photoexcited carriers in Si2Te3 nanowires at various temperatures and excitation powers. Si2Te3 nanowires were synthesized, by using gold as a catalyst, on a silicon substrate by the chemical vapor deposition method. The photoluminescence spectrum of Si2Te3 nanowires was primary dominated by defect and surface states related emission at both low and room temperatures. We observed that the decay time of photoexcited carries was very long (> 10 ns) at low temperatures and became shorter (< 2 ns) at room temperature. Further, the carrier decay time became faster at high excitation rates. The acceleration of the photoexcited carrier decay rates indicate the thermal quenching along with the non-radiative recombination at high temperature and excitation power. Our results have quantitatively elucidated decay mechanisms that are important towards understanding and controlling of the electronic states in Si2Te3 nanostructures for optoelectronic applications.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, submitte