Solid-state laser system for laser cooling of Sodium

TL;DR

This paper presents a stable, high-power solid-state laser at 589 nm for sodium laser cooling, utilizing sum-frequency generation with high efficiency and tunability, offering a robust alternative to dye lasers in atomic physics.

Contribution

The authors developed a frequency-stabilized, all-solid laser source at 589 nm with high power and tunability, demonstrating a practical alternative to dye lasers for sodium atom experiments.

Findings

Achieved up to 800 mW output power at 589 nm.

Conversion efficiency reached 2 W/W^2 after optimization.

Output wavelength tunable over 60 GHz.

Abstract

We demonstrate a frequency-stabilized, all-solid laser source at 589 nm with up to 800 mW output power. The laser relies on sum-frequency generation from two laser sources at 1064 nm and 1319 nm through a PPKTP crystal in a doubly-resonant cavity. We obtain conversion efficiency as high as 2 W/W^2 after optimization of the cavity parameters. The output wavelength is tunable over 60 GHz, which is sufficient to lock on the Sodium D2 line. The robustness, beam quality, spectral narrowness and tunability of our source make it an alternative to dye lasers for atomic physics experiments with Sodium atoms.