LASER SOURCE FOR A COLD-ATOM INERTIAL SENSOR

摘要

The invention relates to a laser-source assembly (10) configured to illuminate a vacuum chamber (E) containing atoms (At) in the gaseous state, so as to obtain a cold-atom inertial sensor, said atoms having at least two ground states separated by a ground-state frequency difference (δf₀) comprised between 1 and a few gigahertz, said assembly comprising: a master laser (Lm) emitting a beam having a master frequency (fm); a first servocontrol loop (BA1) configured to servocontrol the master frequency of the master laser to a frequency corresponding to half a determined frequency of an atomic transition between a ground state and an excited state of said atoms; a slave laser (Le) having a slave frequency (fe); and a second servocontrol loop (BA2) configured to servocontrol the slave frequency of the slave laser with respect to the master frequency (fm), the slave frequency (fe) being shifted with respect to the master frequency (fm) over time successively by first, second and third preset shift values (δf₁, δf₂, δf₃), said shift values being comprised in an interval equal to half the ground-state frequency difference (δf₀) plus or minus a few hundred MHz.