Chip-Scale Lasers for Inertial Navigation Systems Using Atom Chip Sensors

We propose to develop and build a novel chip-scale external cavity laser with frequency agility for use in matter-wave inertial navigation systems.  These lasers exhibit narrow linewidth, frequency agility (10 GHz), environmental immunity, and can be precisely tuned during manufacture to rubidium D2 transitions or any transition wavelength where Fabry-Perot laser diodes are available, without the need for excessive heating or cooling.  By offset phase locking chip-ECLs will enable systems off lasers at precise frequency offsets as needed for preparing, probing, and splitting Bose-Einstein condensates while maintaining continuous servo control.  Reliable hands-off lasers are needed for field-deployed inertial navigation systems using cold atoms sources or coherent matter waves. BENEFIT: A domestic diode laser system capable of reliable, agile, frequency offset locking will find uses in spectroscopic sensors as well as laser sources for producing cold atom samples for atom interferometry.  Inertial navigation systems based on atom interferometers can someday set new accuracy standards, and have applications for civilian navigation, submarine navigation, as well as space-based applications such as satellite positioning and spacecraft navigation.  These laser systems will also aid researchers studying coherent matter physics by removing the need to develop and maintain complex laser systems.