Synthesizing Optical Spectra using Computer-Generated Holography Techniques

Abstract

Experimental control and detection of atoms and molecules often rely on optical transitions between different electronic states. In many cases, substructure such as hyperfine or spin-rotation structure leads to the need for multiple optical frequencies spaced by MHz to GHz. The task of creating multiple optical frequencies -- optical spectral engineering -- becomes challenging when the number of frequencies becomes large, a situation that one could encounter in complex molecules and atoms in large magnetic fields. In this work, we present a novel method to synthesize arbitrary optical spectra by modulating a monochromatic light field with a time-dependent phase generated through computer-generated holography techniques. Our method is compatible with non-linear optical processes such as sum frequency generation and second harmonic generation. Additional requirements that arise from the finite lifetimes of excited states can also be satisfied in our approach. As a proof-of-principle demonstration, we generate spectra suitable for cycling photons on the X-B transition in CaF, and verify via Optical Bloch Equation simulations that one can achieve high photon scattering rates, which are important for fluorescent detection and laser cooling. Our method could offer significant simplifications in future experiments that would otherwise be prohibitively complex.

arXiv comment11 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (15)

• Laser cooling of a diatomic molecule
• Molecules cooled below the Doppler limit
• Laser cooling and slowing of CaF molecules
• Precision Measurement of Time-Reversal Symmetry Violation with Laser-Cooled Polyatomic Molecules
• Radio Frequency Magneto-Optical Trapping of CaF with High Density
• Trapping ultracold dysprosium: a highly magnetic gas for dipolar physics
• Laser Cooling of Optically Trapped Molecules
• Time-reversal symmetry violation in molecules induced by nuclear magnetic quadrupole moments
• 1D Magneto-Optical Trap of Polyatomic Molecules
• Magneto-Optical Trap for Thulium Atoms
• Laser slowing of CaF molecules to near the capture velocity of a molecular MOT
• Broadband Optical Serrodyne Frequency Shifting
• A Zeeman slower for diatomic molecules
• Transverse laser cooling of a thermal atomic beam of dysprosium
• Creation of arbitrary spectra with an electro-optic modulator

Cited by in corpus (9)

• A laser cooling scheme for precision measurements using barium monofluoride (137Ba19F) molecules
• Molecular Laser-Cooling in a Dynamically Tunable Repulsive Optical Trap
• Bichromatic Imaging of Single Molecules in an Optical Tweezer Array
• Optical cycling in polyatomic molecules with complex hyperfine structure
• Laser cooling of barium monofluoride molecules using synthesized optical spectra
• Molecular laser cooling using serrodynes: Implementation, characterization and prospects
• High-resolution spectroscopy of barium monofluoride: Odd isotopologues, hyperfine structure and isotope shifts
• Magnetic hyperfine structure constants of ${}^{137}$BaF in the ${}^2{\Pi }_{1/2}$ and ${}^2{\Pi }_{3/2}$ excited states
• Amplification of arbitrary frequency chirps of pulsed light on nanosecond timescales