《Laser Stabilization - Hall》.pdfVIP

1 Laser Stabilization John L. Hall, Matthew S. Taubman, and Jun Ye JILA, University of Colorado and National Institute of Standards and Technology Boulder, Colorado 80309-0440 1. Introduction and Overview For laser applications in which measurement precision is a key feature, frequency stabilized lasers are preferred, if not essential. This observation was true in the gas laser days when the 10-6 fractional Doppler width set the uncertainty scale. Now we have diode-pumped solid state lasers with fractional tuning range approaching 10-2 or more, and laser diode systems with several percent tuning. Such tuning is useful to find the exact frequency for our locking resonance, but then stabilization will be essential. Locking to cavities and atomic references can provide excellent stability, even using a widely tunable laser source. Indeed, laser frequency stability between independent systems has been demonstrated at 5 x10-14 in 1 s averaging time, and more than a decade better at 300 s. This incredible performance enhancement is possible because of a feedback from measurement of the lasers frequency error from our setpoint, this signal being fed into a filter/amplifier system and finally to an actuator on the laser itself which changes its frequency in response. While such feedback in response to performance may be the most important principle in evolution, in machines and lasers feedback enables the design of lighter, less costly systems. The accuracy is obtained, not by great bulk and stiffness, but rather by error correction, comparing the actual output against the ideal. This continuous correction will also detect and suppress the systems nonlinearity and noise. The performance limitation ultimately is set by imprecision of the measurement, but there is a lot of care required to get into that domain: we mu