The Navy seeks to develop a low SWaP, multi-band, 780-nm, laser system with five separate, stabilized laser frequencies locked near the Rb85 D2 line in order to drive the necessary atomic transitions for quantum sensing based on atom interferometry. The currently employed method of accessing all necessary frequencies uses multiple independent lasers - each with separate saturated absorption locks. The current method is unrealistic for mobile sensor development because it demands large size and weight and adds the complication of requiring multiple, independent locking mechanisms to stabilize each laser frequency and intensity. Q-Peak proposes a method to demonstrate an innovative, low SWaP, narrow bandwidth, linearly polarized, fiber-integrated multi-band, 780-nm, laser system with frequency stability to within 10 kHz of the respective atomic transitions and intensity fluctuations below 0.1% of the output intensity, polarization stability to within 0.01 degrees, and a laser bandwidth less than 50 kHz for atom interferometry applications. Our innovative approach significantly reduces the number of optical components and results in a narrow bandwidth, low phase noise, low SWaP 780-nm multi-band laser system.
Benefit: Fiber-integrated 780-nm multi-band laser system has military applications, such as quantum sensors based on atom interferometry and precision inertial navigation. It also has many commercial applications, such as cooling of rubidium in atomic clocks, gravitational sensors, accelerometers, rotation sensors, gravity gradiometers, and fundamental physics including measurements of the gravitational constant, the fine-structure constant, and the universality of free fall.
Keywords: Frequency Doubling, Frequency Doubling, mobile sensor, Erbium-doped fiber amplifier, saturated absorption lock, atom interferometry, 780-nm laser, acousto-optic modulator
