Synchronous multi-color laser network with daily sub-femtosecond timing drift

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a highly precise laser synchronization network over 4.7 km with sub-femtosecond timing stability, enabling advanced atomic imaging and quantum experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multi-color laser network with daily sub-femtosecond drift, achieving record-low timing stability over long distances.

Findings

Record-low 0.6 fs RMS timing drift over 40 hours.

Out-of-loop jitter of 1.3 fs RMS from 1 Hz to 1 MHz.

Identification of nine noise sources, dominated by laser jitter.

Abstract

Filming atoms in motion with sub-atomic spatiotemporal resolution is one of the distinguished scientific endeavors of our time. Newly emerging X-ray laser facilities are the most likely candidates to enable such a detailed gazing of atoms due to their angstrom-level radiation wavelength. To provide the necessary temporal resolution, numerous mode-locked lasers must be synchronized with ultra-high precision across kilometer-distances. Here, we demonstrate a metronome synchronizing a network of pulsed-lasers operating at different center wavelengths and different repetition rates over 4.7-km distance. The network achieves a record-low timing drift of 0.6 fs RMS measured with 2-Hz sampling over 40 h. Short-term stability measurements show an out-of-loop timing jitter of only 1.3 fs RMS integrated from 1 Hz to 1 MHz. To validate the network performance, we present a comprehensive noise analysis based on the feedback flow between the setup elements. Our analysis identifies nine uncorrelated noise sources, out of which the slave laser's inherent jitter dominates with 1.26 fs RMS. This suggests that the timing precision of the network is not limited by the synchronization technique, and so could be much further improved by developing lasers with lower inherent noise.