Laser frequency locking system using orthogonally demodulated Pound–Drever–Hall method

Abstract

Based on the principle of orthogonal demodulation, a Pound-Drever-Hall laser frequency locking scheme is developed. In the orthogonal demodulation Pound-Drever-Hall system, three sine signals are generated simultaneously using a direct digital synthesizer. A 0° phase sine signal is used to drive an electro-optic modulator to produce the phase sidebands, and 180° and 270° phase sine signals are used as reference signals for phase demodulation. The phase-modulated laser beam is coupled with a reference Fabry–Pérot cavity, and the reflected beam is sent into a photo-detector, whose output is mixed with two orthogonal reference signals to obtain two orthogonal components of the error signal. Using an analogto- digital converter, the two orthogonal components are processed using orthogonal phase sensitive detection to obtain the error signal on a host computer. The Pound-Drever-Hall laser frequency discrimination and tracking system is established and investigated experimentally using the orthogonal demodulation method. A frequency discrimination curve is obtained, and it is observed that the resonant frequency of the Fabry–Pérot cavity can automatically track laser frequency variation.