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Wide and fast-frequency tuning for a stabilized diode laser

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Abstract

External-cavity diode laser (ECDL) has important applications in many fundamental and applied researches. Here we report a method to fast and widely tune the frequency of a stabilized ECDL. The beat frequency between the ECDL and a frequency-locked reference laser is identified by the voltage-controlled oscillator contained in a phase detector, whose output voltage is subtracted from the flexibly controlled PC signal to generate an error signal for stabilizing the ECDL. The output frequency of the stabilized ECDL can be shifted at a short characteristic time of ∼ 150 μs within a range of ∼ 620 MHz. The wide and fast-frequency tuning achieved by our method is compared with other previous works. We demonstrated the performance of our method by the efficient sub-Doppler cooling of Cs atoms with the temperature as low as 6 μK.

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Data availability The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements We thank Prof. Cheng Chin for his helpful suggestions. This work was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFA0304203), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61722507, 61675121, and 61705123), PCSIRT (No. IRT17R70), 111 Project (Grant No. D18001), the Shanxi 1331 KSC, the Program for the Outstanding Innovative Teams of Higher Learning Institutions of Shanxi (OIT), the Open Research Fund Program of the State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Quantum Optics and Quantum Optics Devices, Institute of Laser Spectroscopy, College of Physics and Electronics Engineering, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, 030006, China

    Yunfei Wang, Yuqing Li, Jizhou Wu, Wenliang Liu, Jie Ma, Liantuan Xiao & Suotang Jia

  2. Collaborative Innovation Center of Extreme Optics, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, 030006, China

    Yuqing Li, Jizhou Wu, Wenliang Liu, Jie Ma, Liantuan Xiao & Suotang Jia

  3. College of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, 030006, China

    Peng Li & Yongming Fu

Authors
  1. Yunfei Wang
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  2. Yuqing Li
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  3. Jizhou Wu
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  4. Wenliang Liu
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  5. Peng Li
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  6. Yongming Fu
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  7. Jie Ma
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  8. Liantuan Xiao
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  9. Suotang Jia
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Correspondence to Yuqing Li or Jie Ma.

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This article can also be found at http://journal.hep.com.cn/fop/EN/10.1007/s11467-021-1117-2.

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Wang, Y., Li, Y., Wu, J. et al. Wide and fast-frequency tuning for a stabilized diode laser. Front. Phys. 17, 22505 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11467-021-1117-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11467-021-1117-2

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