Under controlled conditions, the collective emission of light by an ensemble of emitters leads to intriguing effects, such as the spontaneous emergence of entanglement and altered emission properties. We will make use of the collective spontaneous emission phenomenon called super-radiance, with thousands of atoms inside an optical cavity, to create a source of light with ultrastable frequency and a linewidth even below that of individual emitters. This novel source of coherent light is of particular interest for frequency metrology, as it may be used as optical clocks with improved robustness to perturbations, and possibly reduced experimental complexity.
A challenge for present-day super-radiant lasers is maintaining the emission continuously. The ambition of our project is to breach this milestone by continuously refilling the optical cavity with strontium atoms that were pre-excited on the intercombination transition. By using a simple thermal beam, we aim at establishing continuous operation in a relatively simple and robust design.
Correlations and linewidth of the atomic beam continuous superradiant laser, Bruno Laburthe-Tolra, Ziyad Amodjee, Benjamin Pasquiou, and Martin Robert-de-Saint-Vincent, SciPost Phys. Core 6, 015 (2023)
July 2023: Atoms have been seen in the main chamber, within
the internship work of Arthur Ilman. The optical cavity of the
superradiant laser (picture on the right) is ready to be
installed in the vacuum.
February 2022: The superradiant laser optical cavity spacer
has been made and polished by the laboratory optician Thierry
Billeton.
Furthermore, the vacuum system is now assembled, but for the
cavity.
January
2022: Welcome to Benjamin Pasquiou, new permanent member of
the group!
And
welcome to Ziyad Amodjee, post-doctoral researcher on the
superradiant laser apparatus!
June 2021:
Welcome to Grégoire Coget, research engineer, taking on the
challenge of the design and construction of this machine!