A novel design of optically pumped cesium beam frequency standards

A novel cesium beam frequency standard has been designed. In this design, the probing laser light is set at an angle of 66.46 degrees to the atomic beam. In this configuration, the effect of laser frequency noise on the signal-to-noise ratio is drastically reduced without the use of any troublesome line-narrowing technique. With respect to the probe laser, the CsD/sub 2/ linewidth is Doppler-broadened to about 125 MHz, five times wider than the linewidth of commercially available diode lasers. Thus, the laser frequency noise affects only slightly the signal to noise ratio of the Ramsey resonance signal. Compared to the perpendicular laser light setup without a line-narrowing probe, simulation shows that a factor of 50 improvement can be achieved with this scheme.<>