Development of UltrastableTi:sapphire Lasers for Optical Clock and Spectroscopy Applications

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase 1 project proposes to develop a femtosecond laser system optimized for optical clocks and other precision metrology applications. In principle, atomic optical transitions have the potential to provide radically higher-accuracy timekeeping, because of the very high frequency of an optical transition. The problem of counting, or down-counting, the oscillations of the optical transition has been solved by self-referenced frequency division of the comb of frequencies generated by a femtosecond laser. This Phase 1 SBIR will work towards passively and actively stabilizing the laser repetition rate, as well as its power and bandwidth, to create a "hands-off" clock source that will run uninterrupted for long periods of time. New approaches to broader bandwidth lasers will also be investigated, both via feasibility study and experiment.