We investigate the dynamics of a two-photon laser under conditions where the spatial variation of the cavity field along the cavity axis is important. Main attention is paid to linear stability analysis and numerical investigation of a two-photon laser for the Maxwell-Bloch equations. The model assumes pumping to the upper state of the two-photon transition. We consider the Maxwell-Bloch equations on the basis of which we study the stability analysis of the steady state of the system. The system is taken to be contained in a ring-laser cavity. Asymptotic expansion of the eigenvalue and analytic information are obtained in some realistic limits, such as very large reflectivity, very small cavity losses, or very small population relaxation rate. The results are illustrated with an application to a specific atomic system (Potassium) as an amplifying medium.
The transmission of a probe field experiencing electromagnetically induced transparency and optical switching in an atomic medium enclosed in an optical cavity is investigated. Using a semiclassical input-output theory for the interaction between an ensemble of four-level atoms and three optical cavity fields coupled to the same spatial cavity mode, we derive the steady-state transmission spectra of the probe field and discuss the dynamics of the intracavity field buildup. The analytical and numerical results are in good agreement with recent experiments with ion Coulomb crystals [M. Albert et…
We present detailed numerical simulations of semiclassical and quantum spectra of a cavity quantum electrodynamics system consisting of a single three-level atom in $Λ$-configuration with one of its transitions strongly interacting with a quantized cavity mode while the other is driven by a coherent classical field. After deriving the equations of motion for the expected values of the system operators from the master equation, we compute numerically the semiclassical and quantum spectra of the system under various levels of external driving field strengths. In the semiclassical approach we neg…
We present a systematic semiclassical model for the simulation of the dynamics of a single two-level atom strongly coupled to a driven high-finesse optical cavity. From the Fokker-Planck equation of the combined atom-field Wigner function we derive stochastic differential equations for the atomic motion and the cavity field. The corresponding noise sources exhibit strong correlations between the atomic momentum fluctuations and the noise in the phase quadrature of the cavity field. The model provides an effective tool to investigate localisation effects as well as cooling and trapping times. I…
We benchmark a selection of semiclassical and perturbative dynamics techniques by investigating the correlated evolution of a cavity-bound atomic system to assess their applicability to study problems involving strong light-matter interactions in quantum cavities. The model system of interest features spontaneous emission, interference, and strong coupling behaviour, and necessitates the consideration of vacuum fluctuations and correlated light-matter dynamics. We compare a selection of approximate dynamics approaches including fewest switches surface hopping, multi-trajectory Ehrenfest dynami…
We present a numerical study comparing semiclassical and quantum models of a damped, strongly interacting cavity QED system composed of a single two-level atom interacting with a single quantized cavity mode driven externally by a tunable monochromatic field. We compute the steady state transmission spectrum of the coupled system under each model and show that in the strong coupling regime, the two models yield starkly different results. The fully quantum mechanical model of the system correctly yields the expected multiphoton transmission spectra while the semiclassical approach results in a …
We investigate spontaneous photon emission and absorption processes of two two-level atoms trapped close to the focal points of an ellipsoidal cavity, thereby taking into account the full multimode scenario. In particular, we calculate the excitation probabilities of the atoms by describing the field modes semiclassically. Based on this approach, we express the excitation probabilities by a semiclassical photon path representation. Due to the special property of an ellipsoidal cavity of having two focal points, we are able to study interesting intermediate instances between well-known quantum-…
The dynamics of the Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian is studied in the semiclassical limit by reducing it to quantum normal form and deriving the phase space dynamics of classically smooth observables. The resulting systematic semiclassical approximation is used to analyze the Rabi oscillations of a photon wave packet revealing subtle consequences of the uncertainty principle.
We complement previous studies of an ion coupled with an optical cavity in the dispersive regime, for a model which exhibits bistability of different configurations in the semiclassical description. Our approach is based on a truncated evolution in phase space and is intended to explore an especially interesting parameter region where the fully quantum-mechanical solution becomes hard but the crudest semiclassical approach fails to capture essential phenomena. We compare the results of our techniques with the ones from numerical diagonalization of the quantum evolution and find that although t…
We investigate a new laser scheme by using Ramsey separated-field technique with bad cavity. By studying the linewidth of the stimulated-emission spectrum of this kind of laser inside the cavity, we find its linewidth is more than two orders of magnitude narrower than atomic natural linewidth, and it is far superior to that of conventional optical Ramsey method and any other available subnatural linewidth spectroscopy at present. Since any cavity related noise is reduced to cavity-pulling effect in bad cavity laser, this Ramsey laser provides the possibility of precision subnatural linewidth s…
We analyse the dynamics leading to radiative cooling of an atomic ensemble confined inside an optical cavity when the atomic dipolar transitions are incoherently pumped and can synchronize. Our study is performed in the semiclassical regime and assumes that cavity decay is the largest rate in the system dynamics. We identify three regimes characterising the cooling. At first hot atoms are individually cooled by the cavity friction forces. After this stage, the atoms' center-of-mass motion is further cooled by the coupling to the internal degrees of freedom while the dipoles synchronize. In the…
A semiclassical model supporting the destructive interference interpretation of zero-width resonances (ZWR) is extended to wavelengths inducing c_minus-type curve crossing situations in Na2 strong field dissociation. This opens the possibility to get critical couples of wavelengths lambda and field intensities I to reach ZWRs associated with the ground vibrationless level v = 0, that, contrary to other vibrational states (v > 0), is not attainable for the commonly referred c+-type crossings. The morphology of such ZWRs in the laser (I; lambda) parameter plane and their usefulness in filtration…
Broadband homodyne detection of the light transmitted by a Fabry-Perot cavity containing a strongly-coupled $^{133}$Cs atom is used to probe the dynamic optical response in a regime where semiclassical theory predicts bistability but strong quantum corrections should apply. While quantum fluctuations destabilize true equilibrium bistability, our observations confirm the existence of metastable states with finite lifetimes and a hysteretic response is apparent when the optical drive is modulated on comparable timescales. Our experiment elucidates remnant semiclassical behavior in the attojoule …
We analyze two configurations for laser cooling of neutral atoms whose internal states store qubits. The atoms are trapped in an optical lattice which is placed inside a cavity. We show that the coupling of the atoms to the damped cavity mode can provide a mechanism which leads to cooling of the motion without destroying the quantum information.
Here we analyse cavity-mediated laser cooling for an experimental setup with an external trap which strongly confines the motion of a particle in the direction of the cavity axis. It is shown that the stationary state phonon number exhibits three sharp minima as a function of the atom-cavity detuning due to a direct atom-phonon-photon coupling term in the system Hamiltonian. These resonances have the same origin as the Mollow triplet in the resonance fluorescence of a laser-driven atomic system. It is shown that a laser-Rabi frequency-dependent atom-cavity detuning yields the lowest stationary…
The cooling rate for cavity mediated laser cooling scales as the Lamb-Dicke parameter eta squared. A proper analysis of the cooling process hence needs to take terms up to eta^2 in the system dynamics into account. In this paper, we present such an analysis for a standard scenario of cavity mediated laser cooling with eta << 1. Our results confirm that there are many similarities between ordinary and cavity mediated laser cooling. However, for a weakly confined particle inside a strongly coupled cavity, which is the most interesting case for the cooling of molecules, numerical results indicate…
We consider an optomechanical system composed by a trapped ion dispersively coupled to a single mode of a pumped optical cavity. We focus in a parameter range for which the semiclassical description predicts two clearly distinct equilibrium configurations in the limits of small and large photon pumping, while a bistable regime is found for intermediate pumping. This semiclassical description, however, is not valid in close proximity of the system transitions or when the mean photon number is low. Here we provide a numerical analysis of the fully quantum state in the few-photon regime, explorin…
We develop the quantum theory of an open-cavity laser assuming that only two modes compete for gain. We show that the modes interact to build up a collective mode that becomes the lasing mode when pumping exceeds a threshold. This collective mode exhibits all the features of a typical laser mode, whereas its precise behavior depends explicitly on the openness of the cavity. We approach the problem by using the density-matrix formalism and derive the master equation for the light field. Our results are of particular interest in the context random laser systems.
We address a fundamental issue in quantum mechanics and quantum information theory, the generation of an entangled pair of qubits that interact solely through a third, semiclassical degree of freedom, in the framework of cavity quantum electrodynamics. We show that finite, though not maximal, entanglement is obtainable in the classical limit, at the price of a diverging effective interaction time. The optimal atomic entanglement derives from a trade-off between the atomic entanglement in a sub-wave packet and the purity of the atomic state. Decoherence by photon loss sets an upper limit on the…
Cavity opto-mechanical cooling via radiation pressure dynamical backaction enables ground state cooling of mechanical oscillators, provided the laser exhibits sufficiently low phase noise. Here, we investigate and measure the excess phase noise of widely tunable external cavity diode lasers, which have been used in a range of recent nano-optomechanical experiments, including ground-state cooling. We report significant excess frequency noise, with peak values on the order of 10^7 rad^2 Hz near 3.5 GHz, attributed to the diode lasers' relaxation oscillations. The measurements reveal that even at…
We address an experimental scheme to analyze the optical bistability and the entanglement of two movable mirrors coupled to a two-mode laser inside a doubly resonant cavity. With this aim we investigate the master equations of the atom-cavity subsystem in conjunction with the quantum Langevin equations that describe the interaction of the mirror cavity. The parametric amplification-type coupling induced by the two-photon coherence on the optical bistability of the intracavity mean photon numbers is found and investigated. Under this condition, the optical intensities exhibit bistability for al…
A scheme to implement quantum logic gates by manipulating trapped ions through interaction with monochromatic external laser field and quantized cavity field, beyond the Lamb-Dicke regime, is presented. Characteristic times, for implementing ionic state transitions using non-resont laser pulse or quantized cavity field, shows a sharp decline for large Lamb-Dicke parameter value of $η_{L}=η_{c}=0.2$, and is seen to decrease further with increase in number of initial state vibrational quanta $m$.
We investigate the resonant quantum dynamics of a laser-pumped real or artificial two-level single-atom system embedded in a leaking microcavity. We found that for stronger laser-atom-cavity couplings the generated microcavity photons exhibit larger steady-state correlations. In particular, the second- and third-order photon correlation functions are greater than the corresponding ones obtained for an incoherent light source, respectively. Furthermore, the emitted microcavity photon flux is enhanced in comparison to weaker coupling cases.
We present a simple extension of the semi-classical model for a two-level system in a cavity, in order to incorporate multiple polarized transitions, such as those appearing in neutral and charged quantum dots (QDs), and two nondegenerate linearly polarized cavity modes. We verify the model by exact quantum master equation calculations, and experimentally using a neutral QD in a polarization non-degenerate micro-cavity, in both cases we observe excellent agreement. Finally, the usefulness of this approach is demonstrated by optimizing a single-photon source based on polarization postselection,…
We propose an implementation of the quantum search algorithm of a marked item in an unsorted list of N items by adiabatic passage in a cavity-laser-atom system. We use an ensemble of N identical three-level atoms trapped in a single-mode cavity and driven by two lasers. In each atom, the same level represents a database entry. One of the atoms is marked by having an energy gap between its two ground states. Appropriate time delays between the two laser pulses allow one to populate the marked state starting from an initial entangled state within a decoherence-free adiabatic subspace. The time t…
Cavity-mediated cooling has the potential to become one of the most efficient techniques to cool molecular species down to very low temperatures. In this paper we analyse cavity cooling with single-laser driving for relatively large cavity decay rates kappa and relatively large phonon frequencies nu. It is shown that cavity cooling and ordinary laser cooling are essentially the same within the validity range of the Lamb-Dicke approximation. This is done by deriving a closed set of rate equations and calculating the corresponding stationary state phonon number and cooling rate. For example, whe…
We extend an earlier semiclassical model to describe the dissipative motion of N atoms coupled to M modes inside a coherently driven high-finesse cavity. The description includes momentum diffusion via spontaneous emission and cavity decay. Simple analytical formulas for the steady-state temperature and the cooling time for a single atom are derived and show surprisingly good agreement with direct stochastic simulations of the semiclassical equations for N atoms with properly scaled parameters. A thorough comparison with standard free-space Doppler cooling is performed and yields a lower tempe…
We further elaborate the theory of quantum fluctuations in vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), developed in Ref. \cite{Hermier02}. In particular, we introduce the quantum Stokes parameters to describe the quantum self- and cross-correlations between two polarization components of the electromagnetic field generated by this type of lasers. We calculate analytically the fluctuation spectra of these parameters and discuss experiments in which they can be measured. We demonstrate that in certain situations VCSELs can exhibit polarization squeezing over some range of spectral frequenc…
A cavity-modified master equation is derived for a coherently driven, V-type three-level atom coupled to a single-mode cavity in the bad cavity limit. We show that population inversion in both the bare and dressed-state bases may be achieved, originating from the enhancement of the atom-cavity interaction when the cavity is resonant with an atomic dressed-state transition. The atomic populations in the dressed state representation are analysed in terms of the cavity-modified transition rates. The atomic fluorescence spectrum and probe absorption spectrum also investigated, and it is found that…
We study the laser-driven Dicke model beyond the rotating-wave approximation. For weak coupling of the system to environmental degrees of freedom the dissipative dynamics of the emitter-cavity system is described by the Floquet master equation. Projection of the system evolution onto the emitter degrees of freedom results in non-Markovian behavior. We quantify the non-Markovianity of the resulting emitter dynamics and show that this quantity can be used as an indicator of the dissipative quantum phase transition occurring at high driving amplitudes.
We report on the controllable response of the lasing frequency to the cavity round-trip path change. This is achieved by modifying the dispersion of the intracavity medium in the four-wave mixing regime in Rb. We can either increase the response by at least a factor of $2.7$ or drastically reduce it. The former regime is useful for sensitive measurements tracking the cavity round trip length and the latter regime is useful for precision metrology.
We present a composite optical cavity made of standard laser mirrors; the cavity consists of a suitable combination of stable and unstable cavities. In spite of its very open nature the composite cavity shows ray chaos, which may be either soft or hard, depending on the cavity configuration. This opens a new, convenient route for experimental studies of the quantum aspects of a chaotic wave field.
The full quantum-statistical theory of the Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSEL) in the form of the Langevin equations is constructed for arbitrary relations between the frequency parameters. The same theoretical treatment as in Ref.[1,2] are used. For detailed analysis the theory is applied for lasers with equally living laser levels and on this basis the analytical expressions for the spectral densities of the Stokes parameter fluctuations are obtained in the explicit dependence on the physical phenomena, including the spin-flip and the optical anisotropy. It is demonstrated the arb…
Analytical expressions for the semiclassical dressed states and corresponding quasienergies are obtained for a two-level quantum system driven by a nonresonant and/or strong laser field in a coherent state. These expressions are of first order in a proper perturbative expansion, and already contain all the relevant physical information on the dynamical and spectroscopic properties displayed by these systems under such particular conditions. The influence of the laser field parameters on transition frequencies, selection rules, and line intensities can be easily understood in terms of the quasi…
We present a theoretical study on the nonlinear dynamics and stationary states of an inhomogeneously broadened spin ensemble coupled to a single-mode cavity driven by an external drive with constant amplitude. Assuming a sizeable number of constituents within the ensemble allows us to use a semiclassical approach and to formally reduce the theoretical description to the Maxwell-Bloch equations for the cavity and spin amplitudes. We explore the critical slowing-down effect, quench dynamics, and asymptotic behavior of the system near a steady-state dissipative phase transition accompanied by a b…
The spectral and temporal response of a set of $N$ quantum emitters embedded in a photonic cavity is studied. Quantum mechanically, such systems can be described by the Tavis-Cummings (TC) model of $N$ two-level systems coupled to a single light mode. Here we compare the full quantum solution of the TC model for different numbers of quantum emitters with its semiclassical limit after a pulsed excitation of the cavity mode. Considering different pulse amplitudes, we find that the spectra obtained from the TC model approach the semiclassical one for an increasing number of emitters $N$. Furtherm…
We propose to use semiclassical methods to treat laser control problems of chemical reaction dynamics. Our basic strategy is as follows: Laser-driven chemical reactions are considered to consist of two processes. One is the wavepacket propagation on an adiabatic potential energy surface (PES), and the other is the electronic transition between PES's. Because the latter process is mathematically equivalent to nonadiabatic transitions between Floquet (dressed) states, we can control such a process using the semiclassical Zhu-Nakamura theory for nonadiabatic transitions. For the former process, w…
A physical implementation of the adiabatic Grover search is theoretically investigated in a system of N identical three-level atoms trapped in a single mode cavity. Some of the atoms are marked through the presence of an energy gap between their two ground states. The search is controlled by two partially delayed lasers which allow a deterministic adiabatic transfer from an initially entangled state to the marked states. Pulse schemes are proposed to satisfy the Grover speedup either exactly or approximately, and the success rate of the search is calculated.
We investigate the linewidth of a quasi-continuous atom laser within a semiclassical framework. In the high flux regime, the lasing mode can exhibit a number of undesirable features such as density fluctuations. We show that the output therefore has a complicated structure that can be somewhat simplified using Raman outcoupling methods and energy-momentum selection rules. In the weak outcoupling limit, we find that the linewidth of an atom laser is instantaneously Fourier limited, but, due to the energy `chirp' associated with the draining of a condensate, the long-term linewidth of an atom la…
We numerically study the dynamics and stationary states of a spin ensemble strongly coupled to a single-mode resonator subjected to loss and external driving. Employing a generalized cumulant expansion approach we analyze finite-size corrections to a semiclassical description of amplitude bistability, which is a paradigm example of a driven-dissipative phase transition. Our theoretical model allows us to include inhomogeneous broadening of the spin ensemble and to capture in which way the quantum corrections approach the semiclassical limit for increasing ensemble size $N$. We set up a criteri…
We evaluate the advantages of performing cross-phase modulation (XPM) on a very-far-off-resonance atomic system. We consider a ladder system with a weak (few-photon level) control coherent field imparting a conditional nonlinear phase shift on a probe beam. We find that by coupling to an optical resonator the optimal XPM is enhanced proportional to the finesse of the resonator by a factor of $F/4π$. We present a semi-classical description of the system and show that the phenomenon is optimal in the self-defined condition of off-resonance-effective-cooperativity equal to one.
We consider the standard double well setup extended with a laser beam in the center to create a "triple well" potential. The beam in the center is much more narrow than the barrier, and it creates a tunable depth well which can support a localized state in the middle. We show that the presence of the localized state in the central well changes the sign of tunneling between the left and right wells and therefore controls the fixed point dynamics of the bosonic Josephson junction.
We address frequency-dependent quantum transport through mesoscopic conductors in the semiclassical limit. By generalizing the trajectory-based semiclassical theory of dc quantum transport to the ac case, we derive the average screened conductance as well as ac weak-localization corrections for chaotic conductors. Thereby we confirm respective random matrix results and generalize them by accounting for Ehrenfest time effects. We consider the case of a cavity connected through many leads to a macroscopic circuit which contains ac-sources. In addition to the reservoir the cavity itself is capaci…
Bad cavity lasers are experiencing renewed interest in the context of active optical frequency standards, due to their enhanced robustness against fluctuations of the laser cavity. The gain medium would consist of narrow-linewidth atoms, either trapped inside the cavity or intersecting the cavity mode dynamically. A series of effects like the atoms finite velocity distribution, atomic interactions, or interactions of realistic multilevel atoms with auxiliary or stray fields can lead to an inhomogeneous broadening of the atomic gain profile. This causes the emergence of instable regimes of lase…
The phonon analog of an optical laser has become the focus of research. We theoretically study phonon laser in a cavity magnomechanical system, which consist of a microwave cavity, a small ferromagnetic sphere and an uniform external bias magnetic field. This system can realize the phonon-magnon coupling and the cavity photon-magnon coupling via magnetostrictive interaction and magnetic dipole interaction respectively, the magnons are driven directly by a strong microwave field simultaneously. Frist, the intensity of driving magnetic field which can reach the threshold condition of phonon lase…
In this article we present a systematic derivation of the Maxwell-Bloch equations describing amplification and laser action in a ring cavity. We derive the Maxwell-Bloch equations for a two-level medium and discuss their applicability to standard three- and four-level systems. After discusing amplification, we consider lasing and pay special attention to the obtention of the laser equations in the uniform field approximation. Finally, the connection of the laser equations with the Lorenz model is considered.
We review and study the roles of quantum and classical fluctuations in recent cavity-optomechanical experiments which have now reached the quantum regime (mechanical phonon occupancy < 1) using resolved sideband laser cooling. In particular, both the laser noise heating of the mechanical resonator and the form of the optically transduced mechanical spectra, modified by quantum and classical laser noise squashing, are derived under various measurement conditions. Using this theory, we analyze our recent ground-state laser cooling and motional sideband asymmetry experiments with nanoscale optome…
We present a laser system based on a 48 cm long optical glass resonator. The large size requires a sophisticated thermal control and optimized mounting design. A self balancing mounting was essential to reliably reach sensitivities to acceleration of below $Δν/ ν$ < 2E-10 /g in all directions. Furthermore, fiber noise cancellations from a common reference point near the laser diode to the cavity mirror and to additional user points (Sr clock and frequency comb) are implemented. Through comparison to other cavity-stabilized lasers and to a strontium lattice clock an instability of below 1E-16 a…
We report on the development of a diode laser system - the `Faraday laser' - using an atomic Faraday filter as the frequency-selective element. In contrast to typical external-cavity diode laser systems which offer tunable output frequency but require additional control systems in order to achieve a stable output frequency, our system only lases at a single frequency, set by the peak transmission frequency of the internal atomic Farady filter. Our system has both short-term and long-term stability of less than 1~MHz, which is less than the natural linewidth of alkali-atomic D-lines, making sim…
In this paper we investigate an implementation of a quantum gate for quantum information processing in a system of quantum dots in an optical cavity manipulated by collinear laser fields. For simplicity we give theoretical and numerical results only for simulations of two quantum dots in a cavity interacting with two collinear fields. Extension to the system of many quantum dots in a cavity can be done in similar manner as the two dots system. It is shown that due to the collinear fields are used, a two qubit gate operation can be acheived by choosing properly detunings and amplitudes of the c…
We demonstrate a technique to tune the optical properties of micropillar cavities by creating small defects on the sample surface near the cavity region with an intense focused laser beam. Such defects modify strain in the structure, changing the birefringence in a controllable way. We apply the technique to make the fundamental cavity mode polarization-degenerate and to fine tune the overall mode frequencies, as needed for applications in quantum information science.
We explore the potential of direct spectroscopy of ultra-narrow optical transitions of atoms localized in an optical cavity. In contrast to stabilization against a reference cavity, which is the approach currently used for the most highly stabilized lasers, stabilization against an atomic transition does not suffer from Brownian thermal noise. Spectroscopy of ultra-narrow optical transitions in a cavity operates in a very highly saturated regime in which non-linear effects such as bistability play an important role. From the universal behavior of the Jaynes-Cummings model with dissipation, we …
The role of coherent population oscillations is evidenced in the noise spectrum of an ultra-low noise lasers. This effect is isolated in the intensity noise spectrum of an optimized single-frequency vertical external cavity surface emitting laser. The coherent population oscillations induced by the lasing mode manifest themselves through their associated dispersion that leads to slow light effects probed by the spontaneous emission present in the non-lasing side modes.
The simplest model of a single-emitter laser generating in the regime of small number of photons in the cavity is theoretically investigated. Based on a system of equations for different moments of the field operators the analytical expressions for mean number of photons and its dispersion are obtained. Using the master equation approach the differential equation for the phase-averaged quasi-probability Q is derived. For some limiting cases the exact solutions of this equation are found.
We experimentally study the relaxation oscillations and amplitude stability properties of an optical laser operating deep into the bad-cavity regime using a laser-cooled $^{87}$Rb Raman laser. By combining measurements of the laser light field with nondemolition measurements of the atomic populations, we infer the response of the gain medium represented by a collective atomic Bloch vector. The results are qualitatively explained with a simple model. Measurements and theory are extended to include the effect of intermediate repumping states on the closed-loop stability of the oscillator and the…
We report a buried heterostructure vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser fabricated by epitaxial regrowth over an InGaAs quantum well gain medium. The regrowth technique enables microscale lateral confinement that preserves a high cavity quality factor (loaded $Q\approx$ 4000) and eliminates parasitic charging effects found in existing approaches. Under optimal spectral overlap between gain medium and cavity mode (achieved here at $T$ = 40 K) lasing was obtained with an incident optical power as low as $P_{\rm th}$ = 10 mW ($λ_{\rm p}$ = 808 nm). The laser linewidth was found to be $\approx$3…
We demonstrate phase and frequency stabilization of a diode laser at the thermal noise limit of a passive optical cavity. The system is compact and exploits a cavity design that reduces vibration sensitivity. The sub-Hz laser is characterized by comparison to a second independent system with similar fractional frequency stability (1 x 10-15 at 1 s). The laser is further characterized by resolving a 2 Hz wide, ultranarrow optical clock transition in ultracold strontium.
