• DOI:10.1103/PhysRevA.84.063813
• Corpus ID: 14234958

Extreme nonlinear response of ultranarrow optical transitions in cavity QED for laser stabilization

@article{Martin2011ExtremeNR,
  title={Extreme nonlinear response of ultranarrow optical transitions in cavity QED for laser stabilization},
  author={M. J. Martin and Dominic Meiser and Jan W. Thomsen and Jun Ye and Murray J. Holland},
  journal={Physical Review A},
  year={2011},
  volume={84},
  pages={063813}
}

• M. Martin, D. Meiser, +2 authors M. Holland
• Published 12 May 2011
• Physics
• Physical Review A

Weexplorethepotentialofdirectspectroscopyofultranarrowopticaltransitionsofatomslocalizedinanoptical cavity. In contrast to stabilization against a reference cavity, which is the approach currently used for the most highly stabilized lasers, stabilization against an atomic transition does not suffer from Brownian thermal noise. Spectroscopy of ultranarrow optical transitions in a cavity operates in a very highly saturated regime in which nonlinear effects such as bistability play an important role. From the universal behavior of the Jaynes-Cummings model with dissipation, we derive the fundamental limits for laser stabilization using direct spectroscopy of ultranarrow atomic lines. We find that, with current lattice clock experiments, laser linewidths of about 1 mHz can be achieved in principle, and the ultimate limitations of this technique are at the 1 μHz level.