Higher-order sideband excitation method for pulsed CPT atomic clock

We propose a higher-order sideband excitation method combined with pulse excitation to reduce power consumption of coherent population trapping (CPT) atomic clocks. Since higher-order sideband excitation enables reduction of radio frequency (RF), our method can significantly reduce switching power loss of an RF generator and its peripheral circuits. Experimental results show that 3rd-order sideband excitation can lead to narrow fringe width and high contrast. In addition, the relative light shift was less than one-third that with conventional excitation method.