Home › Content

Ultra-low birefringence dodecagonal vacuum glass cell

Fri, 2016-06-03 11:55 - Wolfgang Alt
Printer-friendly versionSend by emailPDF version
Date: 
2015-12-21
Author(s): 

Stefan Brakhane, Wolfgang Alt, Dieter Meschede, Carsten Robens, Geol Moon, and Andrea Alberti

Reference: 

Rev. Sci. Instrum. 86, 126108 (2015)

URL: 

http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4938281

We report on an ultra-low birefringence dodecagonal glass cell for ultra-high vacuum applications. The epoxy-bonded trapezoidal windows of the cell are made of SF57 glass, which exhibits a very low stress-induced birefringence. We characterize the birefringence Δ of each window with the cell under vacuum conditions, obtaining values around 10^−8. After baking the cell at 150 °C, we reach a pressure below 10^−10 mbar. In addition, each window is antireflection coated on both sides, which is highly desirable for quantum optics experiments and precision measurements.