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arXiv · 2311.08542

Laser frequency stabilization by modulation transfer spectroscopy and balanced detection of molecular iodine for laser cooling of ${}^{174}$Yb

Álvaro M. G. de Melo·Hector Letellier·Apoorva Apoorva·Antoine Glicenstein·Robin Kaiser
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Abstract

We report laser frequency stabilization by the combination of modulation transfer spectroscopy and balanced detection of a relatively weak hyperfine transition of the R(158)25-0 line of molecular iodine (${}^{127}$I$_{2}$), which is used as a new frequency reference for laser trapping and cooling of ${}^{174}$Yb on the $^{1}S_{0} - {}^{3}P_{1}$ transition. The atomic cloud is characterized by time-of-flight measurements, and an on-resonance optical depth of up to 47 is obtained. We show laser noise reduction and characterize the short-term laser frequency instability by the Allan deviation of the laser fractional frequency. The minimum measured value is 3.9 x $10^{-13}$ at 0.17 s of averaging time.

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Álvaro M. G. de Melo, Hector Letellier, Apoorva Apoorva, Antoine Glicenstein, Robin Kaiser. 2023-11-14. Laser frequency stabilization by modulation transfer spectroscopy and balanced detection of molecular iodine for laser cooling of ${}^{174}$Yb. https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.08542

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