A high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonator-oscillator-based 4.596 GHz frequency source: Application to a coherent population trapping Cs vapor cell atomic clock

This article reports on the design and characterization of a high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonator (HBAR)-oscillator-based 4.596 GHz frequency source. A 2.298 GHz signal, generated by an oscillator constructed around a thermally controlled two-port aluminum nitride-sapphire HBAR resonator with a Q-factor of 24 000 at 68 degrees C, is frequency multiplied by 2-4.596 GHz, half of the Cs atom clock frequency. The temperature coefficient of frequency of the HBAR is measured to be -23 ppm/degrees C at 2.298 GHz. The measured phase noise of the 4.596 GHz source is -105 dB rad(2)/Hz at 1 kHz offset and -150 dB rad(2)/Hz at 100 kHz offset. The 4.596 GHz output signal is used as a local oscillator in a laboratory-prototype Cs microcell-based coherent population trapping atomic clock. The signal is stabilized onto the atomic transition frequency by tuning finely a voltage-controlled phase shifter implemented in the 2.298 GHz HBAR-oscillator loop, preventing the need for a high-power-consuming direct digital synthesis. The short-term fractional frequency stability of the free-running oscillator is 1.8 x 10(-9) at one second integration time. In locked regime, the latter is improved in a preliminary proof-of-concept experiment at the level of 6.6 x 10(-11) tau(-1/2) up to a few seconds and found to be limited by the signal-to-noise ratio of the detected CPT resonance. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.