Hannover 2016 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 35: Laser Development II

Q 35.3: Talk

Wednesday, March 2, 2016, 15:00–15:15, a310

A FPGA-based single laser atom-cooling system — •Wolfgang Bartosch, Holger Ahlers, Thijs Wendrich, Wolfgang Ertmer, and Ernst Rasel — Leibniz Universität Hannover

Atom optic experiments usually require frequency stabilized light with several wavelengths. For example, the cooling and trapping of ⁸⁷Rb atoms in a magneto-optical trap requires typically three lasers. One for the actual atom cooling, one to re-excite atoms that decayed in a dark state far from the cooling cycle (repumping) and one to reference the absolute frequency of the other lasers to a spectroscopy. Here a system that unifies these tasks in a single laser, by making fast frequency jumps with 100 µs cycle time is demonstrated. The system is realized with a digital, FPGA-based feed-forward filter to control the DFB laser and is able to suppress short-term thermal drifts after a jump. A system like this can ease the development of apparatuses for atom interferometry as well as for commercial laser applications.
This work is part of the LASUS project which is supported by the German Space Agency DLR with funds provided by the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) under grant number 50WM1239.