Suppression of laser beam’s polarization and intensity fluctuation via a Mach–Zehnder interferometer with proper feedback

Abstract

Long ground-Rydberg coherence lifetime is interesting for implementing high-fidelity quantum logic gates, many-body physics, and other quantum information protocols. However, the potential well formed by a conventional far-off-resonance red-detuned optical-dipole trap that is attractive for ground-state cold atoms is usually repulsive for Rydberg atoms, which will result in the rapid loss of atoms and low repetition rate of the experimental sequence. Moreover, the coherence time will be sharply shortened due to the residual thermal motion of cold atoms. These issues can be addressed by a one-dimensional magic lattice trap, which can form a deeper potential trap than the traveling wave optical dipole trap when the output power is limited. In addition, these common techniques for atomic confinement generally have certain requirements for the polarization and intensity stability of the laser. Here, we demonstrated a method to suppress both the polarization drift and power fluctuation only based on the phase management of the Mach–Zehnder interferometer for a one-dimensional magic lattice trap. With the combination of three wave plates and the interferometer, we used the instrument to collect data in the time domain, analyzed the fluctuation of laser intensity, and calculated the noise power spectral density. We found that the total intensity fluctuation comprising laser power fluctuation and polarization drift was significantly suppressed, and the noise power spectral density after closed-loop locking with a typical bandwidth of 1–3000 Hz was significantly lower than that under the free running of the laser system. Typically, at 1000 Hz, the noise power spectral density after locking was about 10 dB lower than that under the free running of a master oscillator power amplifier system. The intensity–polarization control technique provides potential applications for atomic confinement protocols that demand fixed polarization and intensity.