Periodically Poled Materials for UV Generation

Army quantum information researchers have an immediate need for improved stable, narrowband violet and UV laser sources with 10–100 mW output and 10 MHz–10 GHz tuning. These sources are required for numerous ion and atom qubits functions including photoionization, Doppler cooling, state initialization, and detection. The cost and complexity of currently available UV lasers hampers current efforts and impedes scale-up to systems with more qubits. Simple, compact, fiber-output sources based on single-pass nonlinear frequency conversion in periodically poled materials will reduce the time and money spent on lasers and create a path toward more sophisticated ion traps requiring larger numbers of UV sources. Periodically poled materials currently being developed offer a clear path to fulfill this goal through up-conversion of commercially available IR lasers. Under the proposed Phase I effort, AdvR will establish the feasibility of fabricating suitable periodically poled materials using newly available substrates with improved properties for UV generation.