Cavity Housings

Proper mounting and temperature control of a high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity are essential to ensure cavity stability and minimize frequency drift. We’ve invested hundreds of hours in finite element modeling and experimental verification of acceleration sensitivity to match cavity, mounting points, and housing design for a wide range of geometries. Let us reduce your design time and improve your frequency stability with cavity housings (and cavities) designed through hands-on experience.

  • Exceptional temperature stability for low frequency drift over a wide operating range
  • Carefully chosen mounting structures to minimize vibration sensitivity
  • Custom cavity & mounting geometries, temperature stabilization, and enclosures
  • Can be optimized for commercially available or custom cavity designs
Temperature control & vibration isolation to keep you stable

Spherical Cavity Housings

Our unique approach to compact spherical cavity housing design offers excellent thermal control. We make use of common-mode techniques to reduce thermal deformation and dampen vibrations, constructing each housing to maximize frequency stability.

  • < 5 mK/°C temperature drift over a wide operating temperature range (5 – 50°C)
  • Diametric and tetrahedral mounting options
  • Cavity can be moved while mounted
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Cylindrical and Notched Cavity Housings

We maximize the performance of this simple cavity design by optimizing its mounting for rigidity and low thermal expansion. Also available as a transportable cavity housing that preserves alignment, a hermetically sealed enclosure, or with dual-stage temperature stabilization. 

  • < 7 mK/°C temperature drift over an intermediate operating temperature range (15 – 40°C)
  • Notched cavity options with reduced acceleration sensitivity for linewidths below 50 Hz
  • Optional mode matching from fiber to cavity
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Midplane Cavity Housings

Our custom cavity designs are often based a midplane cavity, as their vertical mounting lends itself well to both portability and customization. We start with our field-proven design and then build each vacuum housing to order, taking into account your specific application and needs.

  • < 5 mK/°C temperature drift over a modest operating temperature range (17 – 30°C)
  • Mounting structure optimized for rigidity and low thermal expansion
  • Optional mode matching from fiber to cavity
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Multistage Cavity Housings

When cavity temperature control is paramount, this housing is the ideal solution. Multiple isolated nesting shells surround the optical cavity to exclude blackbody radiation and guarantee the maximum thermal time constant, despite hourly or daily lab temperature fluctuations.

  • Multistage thermal and blackbody radiation shielding
  • Choice of 3 or 4 nested shells, depending on thermal insulation required
  • << 1 mK/°C temperature drift over a wide operating temperature range (5 – 50°C)
  • Thermal time constant of > 3 days
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Transportable Cavity Housings

Good science shouldn’t have to be stationary. To maximize experimental versatility, we can create vacuum housings with an ultra-high vacuum clamp feed through. This allows the cavity to be clamped to the mounting block, protecting the cavity and preserving alignment while keeping the system under vacuum during a gentle move within the lab, or during local transport.

  • Frequently provided with a battery-powered ion pump for transport
  • Tested on the flood-damaged roads of Boulder, Colorado in the fall of 2013!

Dual Stage Housings

This ultimate (but not compact) enclosure contains our standard temperature stabilized vacuum housing with a new twist: the standard cavity housing is further temperature stabilized and isolated from the surroundings by a second thermal shell. This approach is designed to offset the thermal drift and gradients that remain the greatest contributors to long term frequency drift.

  • Nested cavity enclosures to minimize thermal effects for maximum frequency stability
  • < 1 mK/day thermal stability at typical laboratory temperatures, ~5 times better than single stage
  • Ideal for optical atomic clocks and precision spectroscopy

Hermetically Sealed Cavity Housings

This prealigned cavity/housing assembly is fiber-coupled to provide high performance while maximizing ease of use. It is designed to perform as highly as possible without vacuum. Its robust design eliminates the need for alignment in less demanding applications, and frees the user from the constraints of the lab.

  • Capable of maintaining linewidths of ~ 100 Hz at 1 second
  • Typical cavity drift: ~ 300 kHz/day
  • Optical input and/or cavity transmission couple directly into fiber

Custom Cavity Housings

Let our experience accelerate your experimental progress with a custom cavity assembly. Our capabilities in matching optical cavities to the needed vacuum and temperature environments have delivered world-class results for various atomic, molecular, and optical applications. The example shown of a custom enclosure containing a tunable Fabry-Perot cavity has been designed to be readily coupled to into a MOT (magneto optical trap). Learn more about our customization options, which include:

  • Vacuum or hermetically sealed systems, radiation shielding
  • Housing of very large or very long cavities; multiple mounting options
  • Dual stage temperature stabilization
  • Detailed characterization of acceleration coefficient
  • TEC cooling option in place of heating
  • Transportable housings without loss of alignment