title: Laser frequency stabilization and control through offset sideband locking to optical cavities.
abstract: 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. 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. We discuss the expected performance and limitations of these techniques and present a laboratory investigation in which both the sideband techniques and the standard, on-tunable Pound-Drever- Hall technique reached the 100Hz/square root(Hz) level.
authors.affiliation: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA. James.I.Thorpe@nasa.gov
authors.forename: J I
authors.initials: JI
authors.lastname: Thorpe
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Numata
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Livas
mesh_terms: D004581:Electronics; D004867:Equipment Design; D005336:Fiber Optic Technology / Q000379:methods; D007368:Interferometry / Q000379:methods; D007834:Lasers; D008027:Light; D015233:Models, Statistical; D055095:Optics and Photonics; D012031:Refractometry / Q000379:methods; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013696:Temperature