An ultrastable silicon cavity in a continuously operating closed-cycle cryostat at 4 K

Abstract

We report on a laser locked to a silicon cavity operating continuously at 4 K with $1\times 10^{-16}$ instability and a median linewidth of 17 mHz at 1542 nm. This is a ten-fold improvement in short-term instability, and a $10^4$ improvement in linewidth, over previous sub-10 K systems. Operating at low temperatures reduces the thermal noise floor, and thus is advantageous toward reaching an instability of $10^{-18}$, a long-sought goal of the optical clock community. The performance of this system demonstrates the technical readiness for the development of the next generation of ultrastable lasers that operate with ultranarrow linewidth and long-term stability without user intervention.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Ultra-stable laser with average fractional frequency drift rate below $5\times 10^{-19}/\mathrm{s}$
• Adapting a Cryogenic Sapphire Oscillator for Very Long Baseline Interferometry
• Resonator with ultra-high length stability as a probe for Equivalence-Principle-violating physics

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• Thermal noise and mechanical loss of SiO${}_2$/Ta${}_2$O${}_5$ optical coatings at cryogenic temperatures
• An ultra-stable cryogenic sapphire cavity laser with an instability of $1.9\times 10^{-16}$ based on a low vibration level cryostat
• A simplified cryogenic optical resonator apparatus providing ultra-low frequency drift
• A hybrid silicon-sapphire cryogenic Fabry-Perot cavity using hydroxide catalysis bonding
• Hyperfine structure of ${}^{173}{\mathrm{Yb}}^{+}$: toward resolving the ${}^{173}\mathrm{Yb}$ nuclear octupole moment puzzle
• Laser stabilization to a cryogenic fiber ring resonator
• Engineering the sensitivity of macroscopic physical systems to variations in the fine-structure constant