The paper describes a Raman-laser system with high performance for an absolute gravimeter that was based on 87Rb atom interferometer. As our gravimeter is a part of the standard acceleration of gravity of China, the Raman lasers’ characteristics should be considered. This laser system includes two diode lasers. The master laser is frequency locked through the frequency-modulation (FM) spectroscopy technology. Its maximum frequency drift is better than 50 kHz in 11 h, which is measured by home-made optical frequency comb. The slave laser is phase locked to the master laser with a frequency difference of 6.8346 GHz while using an optical phase lock loop (OPLL). The phase noise is lower than −105 dBc/Hz at the Fourier frequency from 200 Hz to 42 kHz. It is limited by the measurement sensitivity of the signal source analyzer in low Fourier frequency. Furthermore, the power fluctuation of Raman lasers’ pulses is also suppressed by a fast power servo system. While using this servo system, Raman lasers’ pulses could be fast re-locked while its fast turning on again in the pulse sequence. The peak value fluctuation of the laser power pulses is decreased from 25% to 0.7%, which is improved over 35 times. This Raman-laser system can stably operate over 500 h, which is suited for long-term highly precise and accurate gravity measurements.
A general analytical form of the round trip phase shift in grating feedback diode lasers is proposed. Using the new form, it is obvious that the round trip phase shift can be independent of rotation angle in first order approximation when only one restriction condition is met. We call this the quasi synchronous tuning (QST) condition. In the QST region, a considerably large mode hopping free tuning range can be obtained. An adjustment structure with only one freedom is needed to accurately find and locate the quasi synchronous pivot, which is not strictly confined on the grating surface and its extension. It means that the external cavity diode lasers design can be easier and the laser can be more stable and reliable.
Cold-atom absolute gravimeters are widely used for measuring the acceleration of gravity, yet their sensitivity is often limited by ground vibrations. Existing vibration compensation algorithms struggle to strike a balance between search accuracy and computational efficiency and are prone to local optima. Here, we propose an improved whale optimization algorithm (IWOA) to address these issues. By combining Logistic-LHS (Latin hypercube sampling) chaotic initialization, adaptive adjustment, and a Gaussian mutation operator to prevent premature convergence, IWOA achieves higher search efficiency and superior sensitivity than traditional algorithms. The method is validated through multiple simulation studies and further assessed experimentally on the NIM-AGRb-1 cold-atom gravimeter system. The results show that IWOA reduces the uncertainty of the fitted phase parameter by 66%. The Pearson correlation between atomic transition probability and the calculated phase increases to a maximum of 0.98, and the gravity sensitivity improves to 47 when the evolution time T is 80 ms.