Characterization of electrical noise limits in ultra-stable laser systems

We demonstrate thermal noise limited and shot noise limited performance of ultra-stable diode laser systems. The measured heterodyne beat linewidth between such two independent diode lasers reaches 0.74 Hz. The frequency instability of one single laser approaches 1.0 × 10−15 for averaging time betwe...

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Veröffentlicht in:Review of scientific instruments 2016-12, Vol.87 (12), p.123105-123105
Hauptverfasser: Zhang, J., Shi, X. H., Zeng, X. Y., Lü, X. L., Deng, K., Lu, Z. H.
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:We demonstrate thermal noise limited and shot noise limited performance of ultra-stable diode laser systems. The measured heterodyne beat linewidth between such two independent diode lasers reaches 0.74 Hz. The frequency instability of one single laser approaches 1.0 × 10−15 for averaging time between 0.3 s and 10 s, which is close to the thermal noise limit of the reference cavity. Taking advantage of these two ultra-stable laser systems, we systematically investigate the ultimate electrical noise contributions, and derive expressions for the closed-loop spectral density of laser frequency noise. The measured power spectral density of the beat frequency is compared with the theoretically calculated closed-loop spectral density of the laser frequency noise, and they agree very well. It illustrates the power and generality of the derived closed-loop spectral density formula of the laser frequency noise. Our result demonstrates that a 10−17 level locking in a wide frequency range is feasible with careful design.
ISSN:0034-6748
1089-7623
DOI:10.1063/1.4971852