title: Coherent polarization locking with near-perfect combining efficiency.
abstract: We demonstrate the coherent locking of two orthogonal polarized lasers by using polarization selective loss. The two orthogonal polarizations are locked coherently to produce a resultant polarization state that sees minimal cavity loss. In contrast to the Michelson locking schemes, our scheme has the advantage of easy tunability, which helps to routinely achieve near-perfect (>99%) combining efficiency even when the power of the two arms is highly imbalanced and is varied from a power ratio of unity to >5. We also demonstrate an interesting phenomenon in which a miniscule injection of an antiphase field component from one arm into another can significantly inhibit the locking mechanism.
authors.affiliation: DSO National Laboratories, Singapore. ppohboon@alum.mit.edu
authors.forename: P B
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Phua
authors.forename: Yuan Liang
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Lim