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Experiments to Control Atom Number and Phase-Space Density in ...

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alum<strong>in</strong>um<br />

hous<strong>in</strong>g<br />

Brewster<br />

w<strong>in</strong>dow<br />

diode <strong>in</strong><br />

collimation<br />

tube <strong>and</strong><br />

bronze holder<br />

mount<strong>in</strong>g<br />

block<br />

Figure 4.14: Pho<strong>to</strong>graph of a slave laser<br />

Injection lock<strong>in</strong>g is accomplished by seed<strong>in</strong>g the free-runn<strong>in</strong>g diode laser with<br />

a weak laser beam, which spatially matches the diode laser output beam. In practice<br />

about 2 mW of power is sufficient <strong>to</strong> seed the diode lasers. When the seed beam is well<br />

aligned, about 60 mW of power at a wavelength of 780 nm are created <strong>in</strong> each of the<br />

slave lasers. Injection locked lasers can be unders<strong>to</strong>od as regenerative amplifiers [74]. If<br />

enough light is <strong>in</strong> the seed beam, the ga<strong>in</strong> medium will amplify this frequency <strong>and</strong> the<br />

free runn<strong>in</strong>g laser oscillation will die out.<br />

The slave lasers are seeded by <strong>in</strong>ject<strong>in</strong>g a small amount of light <strong>in</strong><strong>to</strong> the rejection<br />

port of the optical isola<strong>to</strong>r located directly beh<strong>in</strong>d the output, as shown <strong>in</strong> figure 4.15.<br />

Because the optical isola<strong>to</strong>r uses the Faraday effect <strong>to</strong> rotate the polarization, the direc-<br />

tion of rotation is <strong>in</strong>dependent of the propagation direction. Therefore the seed beam<br />

polarization matches the slave laser output polarization.<br />

<strong>to</strong> additional<br />

slave lasers<br />

Figure 4.15: Setup for <strong>in</strong>jection lock<strong>in</strong>g the slave lasers. Figure courtesy of Gabriel Price.<br />

59<br />

λ<br />

TEC

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