Neutral Mounting of Whispering Gallery Mode Resonators for Suppression of Mechanical Frequency Fluctuations

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has developed a neutral mounting scheme that eliminates the acceleration sensitivity of whispering gallery mode resonators (WGMRs), making them suitable for use in high-precision portable instruments such as optical atomic clocks and high-resolution laser ranging systems. With state-of-the-art WGMR mounting schemes, accelerations induce deformations in the resonator structure, changing its resonant frequency and limiting their usefulness in precision devices. JPL’s novel coaxial mounting scheme is capable of reducing and even eliminating these vibration- and acceleration-induced frequency fluctuations, yielding a WGMR with superior frequency stability that can be used for creating ultra-compact, highly stabilized lasers that are ideally suited for use in spectroscopy, sensing, and frequency metrology applications.