Ultraviolet (UV) diode lasers are widely used in many photonics applications. But their frequency stabilization schemes are not as mature as frequency-doubling lasers, mainly due to some limitations in the UV spectral region. Here we developed a high-performance UV frequency stabilization technique implemented directly on UV diode lasers by combining the dichroic atomic vapor laser lock and the resonant transfer cavity lock. As an example, we demonstrate a stable locking with frequency standard deviations of approximately 200 KHz and 300 KHz for 399nm and 370nm diode lasers in 20 minutes. We achieve a long-term frequency drift of no more than 1 MHz for the target 370nm laser within an hour, which was further verified with fluorescence counts rates of a single trapped $^{171}$Yb$^+$ ion. We also find strong linear correlations between lock points and environmental factors such as temperature and atmospheric pressure.
A dichroic atomic vapor laser lock (DAVLL) system exploiting buffer-gas-filled millimeter-scale vapor cells is presented. This system offers similar stability as achievable with conventional DAVLL system using bulk vapor cells, but has several important advantages. In addition to its compactness, it may provide continuous stabilization in a multi-gigahertz range around the optical transition. This range may be controlled either by changing the temperature of the vapor or by application of a buffer gas under an appropriate pressure. In particular, we experimentally demonstrate the ability of th…
We demonstrate a technique to lock the frequency of a laser to a transition between two excited states in Rb vapor in the presence of a weak magnetic field. We use a ladder configuration from specific hyperfine sublevels of the 5S 1/2, 5P 3/2, and 5D 5/2 levels. This atomic configuration can show Electromagnetically Induced Transparency and Absorption processes. The error signal comes from the difference in the transparency or absorption felt by the two orthogonal polarizations of the probe beam. A simplified model is in good quantitative agreement with the observed signals for the experimenta…
We developed a simple three-stage amplifying tunable cw diode laser system that comprises: a Littrow configuration master laser, frequency stabilized with a dichroic atomic vapor laser lock (DAVLL), an acousto-optic frequency shifter (AOM), an injection-locked slave laser and a tapered amplifier (TA). Slave amplifies the frequency-shifted beam and suppresses (within 0.5%) the strong dependence of its intensity on the AOM carrier frequency, thus acting as an efficient optical limiter. The beam is further amplified in TA. System operates at 780 nm, with an output power above 700 mW, a time-avera…
We report observation of the $\rm 5S_{1/2} \rightarrow 5D_{5/2}$ two-photon transition in Rb vapor at 778 nm, using an external cavity diode laser system and a heated vapor cell. The spectra in the two isotopes show well-resolved hyperfine transitions. The peaks are Doppler free, and have a Lorentzian lineshape with a typical linewidth of 2.2 MHz. This linewidth is larger than the natural linewidth of 300 kHz, but is still 5--10 times smaller than the linewidth for single-photon transitions in the D$_2$ line. Since the absolute frequency of this transition is measured with 8 kHz precision, it …
Stable 30 fs pulses centered at 1068 nm (less than 10 optical cycles) are demonstrated in a diode pumped Yb:CaYAlO4 laser by using high-quality chemical vapor deposited monolayer graphene as the saturable absorber. The mode locked 8.43 optical-cycle pulses have a spectral bandwidth of ~ 50 nm and a pulse repetition frequency of ~ 113.5 MHz. To our knowledge, this is the shortest pulse ever reported for graphene mode-locked lasers and mode-locked Yb-doped bulk lasers. Our experimental results demonstrate that graphene mode locking is a very promising practical technique to generate few-cycle op…
A phase modulated RF current source is applied to an injection locked diode laser operating at $780\unit{nm}$. This produces tunable phase modulated sidebands of the laser suitable for stabilizing the length of an optical transfer cavity using the Pound-Drever-Hall technique. The Pound-Drever-Hall signal is anti-symmetric about the lock point, despite the presence of significant diode laser amplitude modulation. The stabilized optical transfer cavity is used to frequency stabilize a 776 nm external cavity diode laser. The stability and tunability of this transfer cavity locked laser is establi…
We report the investigation of a collimated blue light generated in rubidium vapor due to the combined action of an ultrashort pulse train and a cw diode laser. Each step of the two-photon transition 5S - 5P$_{3/2}$ - 5D is excited by one of the lasers, and the induced coherence between the 5S and 6P$_{3/2}$ states is responsible for generating the blue beam. Measurements of the excitation spectrum reveal the frequency comb structure, indicating that each individual mode is responsible for inducing a nonlinear process. The strong signal dependency on the atomic density is characterized by a sh…
The design of a 671 nm diode laser with a mode-hop-free tuning range of 40 GHz is described. This long tuning range is achieved by simultaneously ramping the external cavity length with the laser injection current. The external cavity consists of a microscope cover slip mounted on piezoelectric actuators. In such a configuration the laser output pointing remains fixed, independent of its frequency. Using a diode with an output power of 5-7 mW, the laser linewidth was found to be smaller than 30 MHz. This cover slip cavity and feedforward laser current control system is simple, economical, robu…
The two-photon transition $5S-5P-5D$ in rubidium vapor is investigated by detecting the fluorescence from the $6P_{3/2}$ state when the atomic system is excited by the combined action of a cw diode laser and a train of ultrashort pulses. The cw-laser plays a role as a velocity-selective filter and allows for a spectroscopy over a large spectral range including the $5D_{3/2}$ and $5D_{5/2}$ states. For a counterpropagating beam configuration, the response of each atomic velocity group is well characterized within the Doppler profile, and the excited hyperfine levels are clearly resolved. The co…
We present a painless, almost-free upgrade to present extended cavity diode lasers (ECDLs), which improves the long term mode-hop free performance by stabilizing the resonance of the internal cavity to the external cavity. This stabilization is based on the observation that the frequency or amplitude noise of the ECDL is lowest at the optimum laser diode temperature or injection current. Thus, keeping the diode current at the level where the noise is lowest ensures mode-hop free operation within one of the stable regions of the mode chart, even if these should drift due to external influences.…
We report on the combined action of a cw diode laser and a train of ultrashort pulses when each of them drives one step of the 5S-5P-5D two-photon transition in rubidium vapor. The fluorescence from the 6P_{3/2} state is detected for a fixed repetition rate of the femtosecond laser while the cw-laser frequency is scanned over the rubidium D_{2} lines. This scheme allows for a velocity selective spectroscopy in a large spectral range including the 5D_{3/2} and 5D_{5/2} states. The results are well described in a simplified frequency domain picture, considering the interaction of each velocity g…
We study electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a heated potassium vapor cell, using a simple optical setup with a single free-running diode laser and an acousto-optic modulator. Despite the fact that the Doppler width is comparable to the ground state hyperfine splitting, transparency windows with deeply sub-natural line widths and large group indices are obtained. A longitudinal magnetic field is used to split the EIT feature and induce magnetooptical anisotropy. Using the beat note between co-propagating coupling and probe beams, we perform a heterodyne measurement of the circula…
Isotope selective optical excitation of atoms is important for experiments with neutral atoms, metrology, and work with trapped ions, including quantum information processing. Polarization-enhanced absorption spectroscopy is used to frequency stabilise a tunable external cavity laser diode system at 398.9 nm for isotope selective photoionization of neutral Yb atoms. This spectroscopy technique is used to measure isotope resolved dispersive features from transitions within a see through configuration Ytterbium hollow-cathode discharge lamp. This Doppler-free dichroic polarization spectroscopy i…
An unexpected interference effect between four-wave mixing excitation routes in rubidium vapor is observed using a combination of a cw diode laser and a 1 GHz femtosecond pulse train. The generated coherent blue light is analyzed by scanning the diode frequency and the repetition rate of the frequency comb. In both cases, the cw laser induces an Autler-Townes splitting and a large separation is observed in the doublet structure due to the configuration of copropagating fields. Remarkably, by scanning the repetition rate, a narrow peak appears as a signature of the interfering pathways. A non-p…
We describe a high-performance, compact optical frequency standard based on a microfabricated Rb vapor cell and a low-noise, external cavity diode laser operating on the Rb two-photon transition at 778 nm. The optical standard achieves an instability of 1.8x10$^{-13}$/$\sqrtτ$ for times less than 100 s and a flicker noise floor of 1x10$^{-14}$ out to 6000 s. At long integration times, the instability is limited by variations in optical probe power and the AC Stark shift. The retrace was measured to 5.7x10$^{-13}$ after 30 hours of dormancy. Such a simple, yet high-performance optical standard …
The application of tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS) to flames with non-homogeneous temperature and concentration fields is an area where only few studies exist. Experimental work explores the performance of tomographic reconstructions of concentration and temperature profiles from wavelength-modulated TDLAS measurements within the plume of an axisymmetric McKenna burner. Water vapor transitions at 1391.67 nm and 1442.67 nm are probed using calibration free wavelength modulation spectroscopy with second harmonic detection (WMS-2f). A single collimated laser beam is swept para…
