A narrow-linewidth Brillouin laser for a two-photon rubidium frequency standard

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a two-photon rubidium optical frequency standard using a narrow linewidth SBS laser, achieving record short-term stability of 2×10⁻¹⁴ at one second, advancing portable optical clock technology.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-photon rubidium frequency standard utilizing a high-Q SBS laser with sub-10 Hz linewidth, significantly improving short-term stability.

Findings

Achieved a fractional frequency stability of 2×10⁻¹⁴ at one second.

Used a photonic integrated circuit SBS laser with linewidth <10 Hz.

Demonstrated the best short-term stability for a two-photon rubidium standard.

Abstract

High precision portable and deployable frequency standards are required for modern navigation and communication technologies. Optical frequency standards are attractive for their improved stability over their microwave counterparts; however, increased complexities have anchored them in the laboratory. Sacrificing sensitivity of the most stable optical clocks has led to the recent development of deployable and portable optical frequency standards, leveraging hot atomic or molecular vapor. The short term limit for a majority of previous reports on two-photon rubidium standards is either the shot-noise or intermodulation limit hindering the one second fractional frequency stability to around $1\times10^{-13}/\sqrt{\tau}$. The answer for the shot-noise limit is to increase optical power and collected fluorescence, while the intermodulation limit solution requires improvements in laser linewidth, stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) lasers are known to reduce frequency noise, suppressing noise of the pump laser at high offset frequencies. We investigate an optical frequency standard based on the two-photon transition in $^{87}$Rb probed with a narrow linewidth photonic integrated circuit SBS laser with a quality factor over 130 million and instantaneous linewidth $<$ 10 Hz. The use of a narrow linewidth clock laser coupled with operating at higher optical intensities yields clock instabilities of $2\times10^{-14}$ at one second, currently the best reported short-term stability for a two-photon rubidium optical frequency standard.