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Locking the frequency of lasers to an optical cavity at the 1.6×10−17 relative instability level

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Abstract

We stabilized the frequencies of two independent Nd:YAG lasers to two adjacent longitudinal modes of a high-finesse Fabry–Pérot resonator and obtained a beat frequency instability of 6.3 mHz at an integration time of 40 s. Referred to a single laser, this is 1.6×10−17 relative to the laser frequency, and 1.3×10−6 relative to the full width at half maximum of the cavity resonance. The amplitude spectrum of the beat signal had a FWHM of 7.8 mHz. This stable frequency locking is of importance for next-generation optical clock interrogation lasers and fundamental physics tests.

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Notes

  1. Consider an optical path of length L which changes by ΔL over a time τ. The change of the phase of a light wave over the time τ corresponds to a frequency shift Δν. For a single laser, the frequency change is Δν=ΔLν/(cτ). The change of the beat frequency of two lasers is Δf=Δν 1−Δν 2. In the case of independent optical paths, the beat frequency instability is equal to the square root of the sum of squares of the frequency instabilities in the two optical paths, approximately \(\sqrt{2}\varDelta L \nu/(c\tau)\), if the paths instabilities are similar, ΔL 1≈ΔL 2≡ΔL. However, in the case of identical optical paths, because ΔL 1=ΔL 2, Δf=ΔL(ν 1−ν 2)/(cτ), a value smaller by approx. \(f/\sqrt{2} \nu\).

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Acknowledgement

This work was performed in the framework of project AO/1-5902/09/D/JR of the European Space Agency.

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  1. Institut für Experimentalphysik, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Q.-F. Chen, A. Nevsky & S. Schiller

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  1. Q.-F. Chen
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  2. A. Nevsky
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  3. S. Schiller
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Correspondence to Q.-F. Chen.

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Chen, QF., Nevsky, A. & Schiller, S. Locking the frequency of lasers to an optical cavity at the 1.6×10−17 relative instability level. Appl. Phys. B 107, 679–683 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-012-5014-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-012-5014-9

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