Dr Stenkamp and Luis Gomez visited Alter Technology UK’s manufacturing site in Scotland. During the site tour, Dr. Dirk Stenkamp was particularly interested in the development work being performed in our optics laboratory, where we are evaluating different types of vapour cell’s for our narrow line width laser products.
In this image, Dr Stenkamp and Luis Gomez are looking at the spectral output of a light source passing through a Rb (rubidium) vapour cell. The resulting spectral image shows the absorption peaks of rubidium, which provides a method of locking the laser to a specific wavelength, while achieving less than 1MHz laser line width.
The challenge for Alter Technology is to miniaturise the components on the optical table into a compact, stable and reliable telecoms style package, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Narrow linewidth lasers are a key enabling technology in quantum applications such as atomic clocks, gravitometers and navigation sensors.