Spectroscopy of micro-fabricated Cs vapours cells for miniature atomic clocks

In this paper we present our spectroscopic studies on Coherent Population Trapping (CPT) in micro-fabricated Caesium cells and our evaluation of its application in miniature atomic frequency standards (atomic clocks). We observe the CPT signal on the Cs D1-line by coupling two hyperfine ground-state Zeeman sub-levels to a common excited state using two coherent electromagnetic fields created with a modulated DFB laser. Contrarily to double resonance, CPT does not require any microwave cavity, which should facilitate the miniaturization of a future atomic clock device. We study and report here on the light shift phenomena at different cell temperatures and laser wavelength. We also present resonance shifts due to cell temperature variations and clock frequency stability measurements. To the best of our knowledge, this article is the first report on light shift with Cs D1 line in a CPT vapour-cell atomic clock.