Pound–Drever–Hall technique

The Pound–Drever–Hall (PDH) technique is a widely used and powerful approach for stabilizing the frequency of light emitted by a laser by means of locking to a stable cavity. The PDH technique has a broad range of applications including interferometric gravitational wave detectors, atomic physics, and time measurement standards, many of which also use related techniques such as frequency modulation spectroscopy. Named after R. V. Pound, Ronald Drever, and John L. Hall, the PDH technique was described in 1983 by Drever, Hall and others working at the University of Glasgow and the U. S. National Bureau of Standards. This optical technique has many similarities to an older frequency-modulation technique developed by Pound for microwave cavities.

Since a wide range of conditions contribute to determine the linewidth produced by a laser, the PDH technique provides a means to control and decrease the laser's linewidth, provided an optical cavity that is more stable than the laser source. Alternatively, if a stable laser is available, the PDH technique can be used to stabilize and/or measure the instabilities in an optical cavity length. The PDH technique responds to the frequency of laser emission independently of intensity, which is significant because many other methods that control laser frequency, such as a side-of-fringe lock are also affected by intensity instabilities.

In recent years the Pound–Drever–Hall technique has become a mainstay of laser frequency stabilization. Frequency stabilization is needed for high precision because all lasers demonstrate frequency wander at some level. This instability is primarily due to temperature variations, mechanical imperfections, and laser gain dynamics, which change laser cavity lengths, laser driver current and voltage fluctuations, atomic transition widths, and many other factors. PDH locking offers one possible solution to this problem by actively tuning the laser to match the resonance condition of a stable reference cavity.

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