Cesium Based Laser-Atomic Oscillator

Abstract

We report the first demonstration of a laser-atomic oscillator with cesium (Cs) atoms. A laser-atomic oscillator (LAO) is analogous to an active mode-locked laser with a self-excited modulator, i.e. atoms, at a ground-state hyperfine transition frequency. Therefore, a LAO can be configured as the simplest active atomic clock or a self-oscillating, earth-field atomic magnetometer that delivers oscillation signals both optically and electrically. With the current experimental Cs-LAO setup, when it is configured as an atomic clock using the 0--0 hyperfine transition, the short-term fractional frequency instability is around 10${}^{-10}$ level. When it is configured as a self-oscillating magnetometer using a magnetically-sensitive hyperfine transition, the magnetic field sensitivity is around 100 fT/$\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ at 60 Hz. The presented Cs-LAO uses a cavity length from $\sim 6.5$ cm to $\sim 11.4$ cm. Ultimately, the minimal length of a Cs-LAO device can be $\le 1.63$ cm. Our new efforts unlock the potential of building truly chip-scale atomic clocks and magnetometers.