1307.3917 (Jonas Keller et al.)

Simple vibration insensitive cavity for laser stabilization at the
10^{-16} level    [PDF]

Jonas Keller, Stepan Ignatovich, Stephen A. Webster, Tanja E. Mehlstäubler

We present the design and realization of two reference cavities for ultra-stable lasers addressing narrow transitions in mixed-species (In+ / Yb+) Coulomb crystals. With a simple setup, we achieve a fractional frequency instability close to the thermal noise limit of a 12 cm long cavity, reaching 4.7*10^{-16} at 10 s with a linear drift of 53 mHz/s. We discuss the individual instability contributions and show that in a setup with a lower thermal noise floor and vibration sensitivity, an instability of 1*10^{-16} can be reached. To achieve this, we implement a vibration insensitive design for a 30 cm long cavity mounted horizontally and conduct first tests that show a sensitivity of 1.8*10^{-11} / ms^{-2} to vertical accelerations. Mechanical tolerances and ways to further reduce the sensitivity are discussed.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.3917