Laser Phase And Frequency Stabilization

Since the directly reflected sidebands do not experience a phase shift from the cavity the heterodyne beat between the reflected sidebands and the carrier is sensitive to fast fluctuations of the laser phase allowing.

Laser phase and frequency stabilization.

Laser phase and frequency stabilization using an optical resonator r. Frequency stabilization is needed for high precision because all lasers demonstrate frequency wander at some level. Hall frequency stabilization of a cw dye laser appl. This instability is primarily due to temperature variations mechanical imperfections and laser gain dynamics 4 which change laser cavity lengths laser driver current and voltage fluctuations atomic transition widths and.

Physical optical and electronic aspects of this discriminator laser frequency stabilization system are considered in detail. The pockels cell actually modulates the laser s phase but the distinction between phase and frequency modulation is irrelevant for the conceptual model. We show that a high speed domain exists in which the system responds to the phase rather than frequency change of the laser. Thus with suitable design the servo loop bandwidth is not limited by the cavity response time.

High sensitivity for detection of resonance information is achieved by optical heterodyne detection with sidebands produced by rf phase modulation. We describe a class of techniques whereby a laser frequency can be stabilized to a fixed optical cavity resonance with an adjustable offset providing a wide tuning range for the central frequency. The phase of the reflected light at the carrier frequency represents a time average of the incident laser phase and frequency. These techniques require only minor modifications to the standard pound drever hall locking techniques and have the advantage of not altering the intrinsic stability of the frequency reference.

Most cavity lengths are sensed using radio frequency phase modulation sidebands added to the main beam by the electro optic modulator via the pound drever hall laser stabilization technique 25. Drever university of glasgow and california institute of technology pasadena ca 91125 usa j. Laser phase and frequency stabilization using an optical resonator article drever1983laserpa title laser phase and frequency stabilization using an optical resonator author r. Ward journal applied physics b year 1983 volume 31 pages 97.

Kowalski and james h. We describe a new and highly effective optical frequency discriminator and laser stabilization system based on signals reflected from a stable fabry perot reference interferometer.