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arXiv · 2009.05006

Canceling the cavity length induced phase noise in an optical ring cavity for phase shift measurement and spin squeezing

Abstract

We demonstrate a new method of light phase shift measurement using a high-finesse optical ring cavity which exhibits reduced phase noise due to cavity length fluctuations. Two laser beams with a frequency difference of one cavity free spectral range are simultaneously resonant with the cavity, demonstrating noise correlations in the error signals due to the common-mode cavity length fluctuations. The differential error signal shows a 30 dB reduction in cavity noise down to the noise floor in a frequency range up to half the cavity linewidth ($\delta\nu/2 \simeq 30$ kHz). Various noise sources are analyzed and their contributions to the noise floor are evaluated. Additionally, we apply this noise-reduced phase shift measurement scheme in a simulated spin-squeezing experiment where we have achieved a factor of 40 improvement in phase sensitivity with a phase resolution of 0.7 mrad, which may remove one important barrier against attaining highly spin-squeezed states. The demonstrated method is the first reported measurement using an optical ring cavity and two independent beams, a flexible situation. This method can find direct application to non-destructive measurements in quantum systems, such as for the generation of spin-squeezed states in atom interferometers and atomic clocks.

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Enlong Wang, Gunjan Verma, Jonathan N. Tinsley, Nicola Poli, Leonardo Salvi. 2020-09-10. Canceling the cavity length induced phase noise in an optical ring cavity for phase shift measurement and spin squeezing. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.103.022609

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