Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Physics / Kristan L. Corwin / Optical frequency references have been widely used in applications such as navigation, remote sensing, and telecommunication industry. For stable frequency references in the near-infrared (NIR), lasers can be locked to narrow absorption features in gases such as acetylene. Currently, most Near NIR references are realized in free space setups. In this thesis, a low-loss hollow-core optical fiber with a diameter of sub millimeters is integrated into the reference setup to provide long interaction lengths between the filling gas and the laser field, also facilitate the optical interaction with low power levels. To make portable NIR reference, gas can be sealed inside the hollow-core fiber, by creating a photonic microcell. This work has demonstrated all-fiber optical frequency references in the Near IR by fabricating and integrating gas sealed photonic microcells in the reference setup. Also, a thoughtful study regarding the lineshape of the fiber-based reference has been accomplished. According the proper modeling of a shift due to lineshape, a correction was applied to our previous absolute frequency measurement of an NIR optical frequency reference. Furthermore, effects of the hollow-core fibers, including mode-dependence frequency shift related to surface modes are explored. In addition, angle splicing techniques, which will improve the performance of the fiber-based frequency reference have been created. Low transmission and return loss angle splices of photonic bandgap fiber, single mode PCF, and large core kagome to SMF-28 are developed and those fibers are demonstrated to be promising for photonic microcell based optical frequency references. Finally, a potentially portable optical metrology system is demonstrated by stabilizing a fiber-laser based frequency comb to an acetylene-filled optical fiber frequency reference. Further work is necessary to fabricate an all-fiber portable optical metrology system with high optical transmission and low molecular contamination.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Physics / Kristan L. Corwin / We have made significant accomplishments in the development of portable frequency standard inside hollow optical fibers. Such standards will improve portable optical frequency references available to the telecommunications industry. Our approach relies on the development of a stabilized Cr:forsterite laser to generate the frequency comb in the near-IR region. This laser is self referenced and locked to a CW laser which in turn is stabilized to a sub-Doppler feature of a molecular transition. The molecular transition is realized using a hollow core fiber filled with acetylene gas. We finally measured the absolute frequency of these molecular transitions to characterize the references. In this thesis, the major ideas, techniques and experimental results for the development and absolute frequency measurement of the portable frequency references are presented. A prism-based Cr:forsterite frequency comb is stabilized. We have effectively used the prism modulation along with power modulation inside the cavity in order to actively stabilize the frequency comb. We have also studied the carrier-envelope-offset frequency (f0) dynamics of the laser and its effect on laser stabilization. A reduction of f0 linewidth from [similar to]2 MHz to [similar to]20 kHz has also been observed. Both our in-loop and out-of-loop measurements of the comb stability showed that the comb is stable within a part in 10^11 at 1-s gate time and is currently limited by our reference signal. In order to develop this portable frequency standard, saturated absorption spectroscopy is performed on the acetylene v1+v3 band near 1532 nm inside different kinds of hollow optical fibers. The observed linewidths are a factor 2 narrower in the 20 um fiber as compared to 10 um fiber, and vary from 20-40 MHz depending on pressure and power. The 70 um kagome fiber shows a further reduction in linewidth to less than 10 MHz. In order to seal the gas inside the hollow optical fiber, we have also developed a technique of splicing the hollow fiber to solid fiber in a standard commercial arc splicer, rather than the more expensive filament splicer, and achieved comparable splice loss. We locked a CW laser to the saturated absorption feature using a Frequency Modulation technique and then compared to an optical frequency comb. The stabilized frequency comb, providing a dense grid of reference frequencies in near-infrared region is used to characterize and measure the absolute frequency reference based on these hollow optical fibers.

La spectroscopie d'absorption moléculaire est un outil incontournable non seulement pour la physique fondamentale et la métrolgie mais aussi pour des domaines aussi divers que les sciences environnementales, la planétologie ou l'astrophysique. Ces dernières années, des techniques spectroscopiques qui exploitent l'amplification résonnante d'interaction entre lumière laser et molécules dans une cavité optique ont fourni des détectivités exceptionnelles sur l'axe d'absorption, tandis que l'axe de fréquence des spectromètres n'atteignait généralement pas le même niveau de précision.Dans cette thèse, nous avons répondu à ce défi en développant la spectroscopie en cavité par temps de déclin stabilisée en fréquence par rétroaction optique (OFFS-CRDS en anglais). Cette nouvelle technique présente une combinaison unique de stabilité et résolution fréquentielles sub-kHz, d'un niveau d'intensité lumineuse intra-cavité de l'ordre du kW/cm^2, d'une detectivite de 2 x 10^(−13) cm^(−1)Hz^(-1/2) limitée par le bruit de photons, et d'une limite de détection de 8.4 x 10^(−14) cm^(−1) sur une plage spectrale étroite. Ces performances inédites sont dues à l'asservissement de la cavité spectroscopique à un laser balayé en fréquence par modulation à bande latérale unique et stabilisé par rétroaction optique avec une cavité en V de réference ultrastable. Pour transférer la cohérence de ce laser sub-kHz à des lasers plus bruiteux dans d'autres gammes spectrales à travers un peigne de fréquence optique, nous avons exploré une nouvelle méthode de clonage de phase par une correction anticipative à large bande passante et démontré une erreur résiduelle de phase de 113 mrad. En appliquant l'OFFS-CRDS à la spectroscopie du CO2 à 1.6 μm, nous avons obtenu un spectre large bande avec une dynamique de 8 x 10^5, et nous avons déterminé douze fréquences de transition absolues avec une exactitude de l'ordre du kHz en mesurant des Lamb dips sub-Doppler en absorption saturée avec un dispositif équipé d'un peigne de fréquence. Par ailleurs, nous avons procédé à une analyse détaillée des sources d'erreurs systematiques en CRDS et nous avons déduit une formule analytique pour le déclin de cavité non-exponentiel dans un régime faiblement saturé qui est susceptible de contribuer à de futures mesures de moments de transition dipolaire indépendantes de la concentration. Nos résultats ouvrent des perspectives prometteuses pour des applications métrologiques de l'OFFS-CRDS, comme par exemple l'étude de profils de raie poussés, la mesures de rapports isotopiques et la spectroscopie d'absorption saturée extensive dans le proche infrarouge. / High-precision molecular absorption spectroscopy is a powerful tool for fundamental physics and metrology, as well as for a broad range of applications in fields such as environmental sciences, planetology and astrophysics. In recent years, spectroscopic techniques based on the enhanced interaction of laser light with molecular samples in high-finesse optical cavities have provided outstanding detection sensitivities on the absorption axis, while the spectrometer frequency axis rarely met as high precision standards.In this thesis, we addressed this challenge by the development of Optical Feedback Frequency-Stabilized Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy (OFFS-CRDS). This novel technique features a unique combination of sub-kHz frequency resolution and stability, kW/cm^2-level intracavity light intensity, a shot-noise limited absorption detectivity down to 2 x 10^(−13) cm^(−1)Hz^(-1/2), as well as a detection limit of 8.4 x 10^(−14) cm^(−1) on a narrow spectral interval. This unprecedented performance is based on the tight Pound-Drever-Hall lock of the ring-down cavity to a single-sideband-tuned distributed-feedback diode laser which is optical-feedback-stabilized to a highly stable V-shaped reference cavity. To transfer the coherence of this sub-kHz laser source to noisier lasers in other spectral regions through an optical frequency comb, we have explored a novel high-bandwidth feed-forward phase cloning scheme and demonstrated a residual phase error as low as 113 mrad. Applying OFFS-CRDS to the spectroscopy of CO_2 near 1.6 μm, we obtained a broadband spectrum with a dynamic range of 8 x 10^5 and retrieved twelve absolute transition frequencies with kHz-accuracy by measuring sub-Doppler saturated absorption Lamb dips with a comb-assisted setup. Furthermore, we have performed a comprehensive analysis of systematic error sources in CRDS and derived an analytic formula for the non-exponential ring-down signal in a weakly saturated regime, which may contribute towards future concentration-independent transition dipole moment measurements. Our results open up promising perspectives for metrological applications of OFFS-CRDS, such as advanced absorption lineshape studies, isotopic ratio measurements and extensive saturated absorption spectroscopy in the near infrared.

Master of Science / Department of Physics / Kristan L. Corwin / We investigate the nonlinear spectroscopy of acetylene in the near infrared region inside a photonic band gap fiber. The near infrared region of the optical spectrum is an area of intensive research due to its relevance to telecommunication and optical metrology. Acetylene provides a large number of reference transitions coincident with the international telecommunication band. Acetylene contains about 50 strong lines between 1510 nm and 1540 nm in the ν1+ν3 ro-vibrational combination band. We have observed the Doppler-free saturated spectrum of several of these lines. The light from a tunable diode laser at ~1531 nm, resonant with the P(11) transition, is amplified by an erbium doped fiber amplifier and split into a strong pump beam and weak probe beam which counter-propagate inside the gas-filled fiber. The measured Doppler linewidth of the P(11) line at room temperature is about 467 MHz wide. The sub-Doppler profile over a pressure range of 200-1600 mT appears as a narrow absorption feature about 20-40 MHz wide, even at the low pump power of ~10 mW. It is found that for a fiber with an 80 cm length, 20 core size, pumped with 29 mw, the optimum pressure is ~530mT. But the optimum pressure condition will further decrease when the fiber length increases.