No abstract

With high-temporal coherence and low-phase noise, narrowlinewidth lasers have important applications in spectroscopy, holography, and coherent detection. At present, ultra-narrowlinewidth lasing is generated by solid-state, optical fiber, and semiconductor lasers, which serve as a good light source for scientific research and industrial applications. In this article, we summarize the fundamental techniques and review recent developments in narrow-linewidth lasers. Moreover, typical applications of narrow-linewidth lasers are discussed to provide reliable and easy-to-use references for comparing the performance of narrow-linewidth lasers.

We propose an effective scheme to implement fast and robust population transfer with a Josephson qutrit via shortcut to adiabaticity. Facilitated by the level-transition rule, a Λ-configuration resonant interaction can be realized between microwave drivings and the qutrit with sufficient level anharmonicity, from which we perform the reversible population transfers via invariant-based shortcut. Compared with the detuned drivings, the utilized resonant drivings shorten the transfer times significantly. Further analysis of the dependence of transfer time on Rabi couplings is helpful to experimental investigations. Thanks to the accelerated process, transfer operation is highly insensitive to noise effects. Thus the protocol could provide a promising avenue to experimentally perform fast and robust quantum operations on Josephson artificial atoms.

Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), with its advantages of low quantum defect and narrow gain bandwidth, has recently enabled an exciting path toward narrow-linewidth and low-noise lasers. Whereas almost all work to date has been in guided-wave configurations, adaptation to unguided Brillouin lasers (BLs) offers a greater capacity for power scaling, cascaded Stokes control, and greater flexibility for expanding wavelength range. Here, we report a diamond Brillouin laser (DBL) employing doubly resonant technology at 1064 nm. Brillouin output power of 22.5 W with a linewidth of 46.9 kHz is achieved. The background noise from the pump amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) is suppressed by 35 dB. The work represents a significant step toward realizing Brillouin oscillators that simultaneously have high power (tens-of-watts+) and kHz-linewidths.

Delayed self-heterodyne/homodyne measurements based on an unbalanced interferometer are the most used methods for measuring the linewidth of narrow-linewidth lasers. They typically require the service of a delay of six times (or greater) than the laser coherence time to guarantee the Lorentzian characteristics of the beat notes. Otherwise, the beat notes are displayed as a coherent envelope. The linewidth cannot be directly determined from the coherence envelope. However, measuring narrow linewidths using traditional methods introduces significant errors due to the 1/f frequency noise. Here, a short fiber-based linewidth measurement scheme was proposed, and the influence of the noise floor on the measurement of the laser linewidth using this scheme was studied theoretically and experimentally. The results showed that this solution and calibration process is capable of significantly improving the measurement accuracy of narrow linewidth.