Research Paper : Studies on Frequency Stabilization of Diode Pumped Nd: YAG Laser

Davarcioglu, Burhan;

Stabilized lasers can provide a probe of the interactions between the excited states of laser transitions and the laser cavity itself. We describe a frequency stabilized diode pumped Nd:YAG laser. In this work, we study Nd:YAG laser with the purpose of achieving both high output power in single frequency operation and good frequency stability by a simpler frequency stabilization technique. Active frequency stabilization is achieved by fringe side locking the laser beam to a reference Fabry-Perot cavity. Frequency stable solid state lasers are required in a variety of applications, including coherent optical communications, laser radar, high resolution spectroscopy and gravity wave detection. The progress
in high resolution spectroscopic measurements of atoms and molecules has been coupled with improvements in the accuracy of these optical frequency standards. An experiment to test stabilized lasers in the vibration free and microgravity
environment of space and applications of ultra stable lasers in space will be described. We report on our ongoing development of Nd:YAG stabilized laser using an original and reliable experimental configuration with expected frequency
stability in the 10-15 range over thousands of seconds of integration time. For many applications the Nd:YAG laser provides capabilities that the laser diode itself cannot. The spatial and temporal coherence of the Nd:YAG oscillator exceeds that
of the laser diode pump. Diode pumped solid state lasers are attractive sources for frequency references applications, owing to their inherently narrow linewidth, low amplitude noise, small size, high efficiency, and high reliability. Second harmonic
generation allows are to lock these lasers to Doppler free lines in the visible. In addition, the availability of two harmonically related and absolutely stabilized wavelengths may enable precision measurements through dispersive media