In this dissertation I present experimental results obtained on the mercury optical clock project in the research group of Jason Jones at the University of Arizona. The project began in 2008 with the purpose of investigating the feasibility of neutral mercury as an optical clock species. The first series of investigations involved building the essential apparatus and scanning the doppler-broadened 6¹S₀ - 6³P₀ clock transition in ¹⁹⁹Hg. Here I present significant modifications to the cooling and trapping laser, improvements to the spectroscopy laser linewidth, and attempts to measure the 2-photon transition in ¹⁹⁹Hg. After previously demonstrating spectroscopy of the mercury clock transition using an optically-pumped semiconductor laser for the cooling and trapping source (OPSL), we replaced the OPSL with a a fiber-amplified ECLD system. We custom built a fiber amplifier to provide gain at 1015 nm, demonstrating the system can yield up to 5 W of signal power with excellent suppression of the ASE power. We find that the ASE is well suppressed by using a two-stage configuration and short sections of gain fiber. The linewidth of our original spectroscopy laser was over 10 kHz, which is unsuitable to resolve of sub-Doppler features. To enhance the performance of our spectroscopy system, we integrated faster feedback bandwidth using AOMs, and incorporated derivative gain into the system. This resulted in a feedback bandwidth for our spectroscopy laser of over 200 kHz. With this system, we demonstrate anactively stabilized linewidth of 525 Hz for our spectroscopy system. Using the upgraded cooling and spectroscopy laser systems, we demonstrate spectroscopy of the clock system and confirm temperature measurements derived from the transition linewidth. We also describe attempts to detect the recoil shift and 2-photon transition in neutral mercury.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/621471 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Lytle, Christian, Lytle, Christian |
| Contributors | Jones, Ronald J., Jones, Ronald J., Anderson, Brian, Cronin, Alexander |
| Publisher | The University of Arizona. |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text, Electronic Dissertation |
| Rights | Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. |
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