Frequency instability of a miniature optically pumped cesium-beam atomic frequency standard

Weibin Xie; Qing Wang; Xuan He; Nan Chen; Zezheng Xiong; Shengwei Fang; Xianghui Qi; Xuzong Chen

doi:10.1063/5.0001749

Frequency instability of a miniature optically pumped cesium-beam atomic frequency standard

Rev Sci Instrum. 2020 Jul 1;91(7):074705. doi: 10.1063/5.0001749.

Authors

Weibin Xie¹, Qing Wang², Xuan He¹, Nan Chen¹, Zezheng Xiong¹, Shengwei Fang¹, Xianghui Qi¹, Xuzong Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Quantum Electronics, School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
² Institute of Fundamental Experiment Education, School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.

PMID: 32752798
DOI: 10.1063/5.0001749

Abstract

This paper proposes a miniature optically pumped cesium-beam atomic frequency standard with a volume of 38.4 l and a weight of 28 kg and examines the main factors that affect its signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Methods to improve the SNR are proposed, which improve the short-term frequency instability: installing a collimator at the exit of the cesium oven, using the beam fluorescence spectrum with the fiber-coupled output to stabilize the laser frequency, and using the 4-5 cycling transition of the cesium D₂ line for the atomic detection. We also examine several frequency shifts that affect the long-term frequency instability and detail methods to reduce these shifts. At present, the frequency instability achieved by the Peking University miniature optically pumped cesium-beam frequency standard has reached 3.12×10^-12/τ.