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US 6,333,942 B1Granted
Atomic frequency standard laser pulse oscillator
AssigneeNippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
InventorsMasataka Nakazawa, Eiji Yoshida
Life of this patent
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AssigneeNippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
InventorsMasataka Nakazawa, Eiji Yoshida
Estimating the term…
An ultra-stable microwave output with less jitter than a prior art atomic oscillator is obtained and an ultra-short optical pulse train is generated with a repetition frequency stabilized at the same level as a time standard. The repetition frequency of a regeneratively mode-locked laser pulse oscillator with a superior low-jitter characteristic is locked directly to a resonance frequency of various atoms. The oscillator provides the means for detecting the frequency difference between the clock signal frequency and a predetermined atomic resonance frequency and outputting it as an error signal, a cavity length tuning device for varying the length of a laser cavity so that the clock signal frequency and the predetermined resonance frequency coincide, and a device for negatively feeding back the error signal output from the frequency difference detection device to the cavity length tuning device. This allows the generation of an optical pulse train (optical output) and a clock signal (microwave output) of a repetition frequency stabilized to the predetermined atomic resonance frequency.
An atomic frequency standard laser pulse oscillator, in which there is a self-oscillatory regeneratively mode-locked laser pulse oscillator for generating an optical pulse train by extracting a clock signal with an integral multiple of the longitudinal mode of a laser cavity and by applying said clock signal to an optical modulator installed in a laser cavity, is characterized as comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.