Volume Bragg Grating Lasers for Trapped Ion Quantum Computing

Hybrid External Cavity Lasers (HECLs) are a type of Fabry-Perot (FP) semiconductor lasers stabilized with Volume Bragg (Holographic) Gratings (VBG) that can produce highly coherent, high-power beams. These lasers are therefore potentially useful for a wide variety of applications such as Raman spectroscopy, laser cooling and trapping, and atomic clocks. They have also been shown to produce beams with these characteristics at a lower cost compared to other semiconductor lasers while also being very compact [1]. We report on the characterization of an 854 nm single-mode VBG laser and the implementation of the same in our ion trap for qubit state preparation and read out by driving D_5/2 ↔ P_3/2 transitions in ⁴⁰Ca⁺. We propose that these lasers could be a compact, cost-effective alternative to other lasers currently being used in various experimental setups and could be more appropriate for some applications such as field-deployable atomic clocks and quantum computers.

[1] M. Mahat, D. Petrov, Ben Carlin, E. Sarailou, G. W. Charache, "High-power single-frequency hybrid external cavity lasers with demonstrated narrow linewidth < 100 kHz," Proc. SPIE 12867, High-Power Diode Laser Technology XXII, 128670M (2024)