Volume Bragg Grating Lasers for Trapped Ion Quantum Computing 

We report on the characterization of an 854 nm single-mode Hybrid External Cavity Laser (HECL) stabilized with a Volume Bragg Grating (VBG) and its application driving the D_5/2 ↔ P_3/2 transition in 40Ca+. It is a semiconductor laser capable of producing highly coherent, high-power beams [1]. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of using these lasers for resonant single-atom manipulations. Allen Deviation and Three-cornered Hat (TCH) [2] measurements were performed to characterize the frequency stability of the HECL, which was found to be comparable to widely-used commercial ECDLs. We propose that these lasers could serve as a compact and cost-effective option for atomic physics experiments and could be more appropriate than conventional ECDLs for some applications such as field-deployable atomic clocks and quantum network nodes. 

 

[1] M. Mahat, D. Petrov, Ben Carlin, E. Sarailou, G. W. Charache, "High-power single-frequency hybrid external cavity lasers with demonstrated narrow linewidth < 100 kHz," Proc. SPIE 12867, High-Power Diode Laser Technology XXII, 128670M (2024) 

[2] J. E. Gray and D. W. Allan, “A method for estimating the frequency stability of a single oscillator,” in Proceedings of the 28th Annual Symposium on Frequency Control (1974), pp. 243–246