Locking the frequency of lasers to an optical cavity at the $1.6\times 10^{-17}$ relative instability level

Abstract

We stabilized the frequencies of two independent Nd:YAG lasers to two adjacent longitudinal modes of a high-finesse Fabry-Pérot resonator and obtained a beat frequency instability of 6.3 mHz at an integration time of 40 s. Referred to a single laser, this is $1.6\times 10^{-17}$ relative to the laser frequency, and $1.3\times 10^{-6}$ relative to the full width at half maximum of the cavity resonance. The amplitude spectrum of the beat signal had a FWHM of 7.8 mHz. This stable frequency locking is of importance for next-generation optical clock interrogation lasers and fundamental physics tests.

arXiv comment14 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Data Tables for Lorentz and CPT Violation
• LIGO: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory
• A sub-40 mHz linewidth laser based on a silicon single-crystal optical cavity
• Making optical atomic clocks more stable with $10^{-16}$ level laser stabilization
• Modern Michelson-Morley experiment using cryogenic optical resonators
• Colloquium: Physics of optical lattice clocks
• Tuning the Thermal Expansion Properties of Optical Reference Cavities with Fused Silica Mirrors

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Magnetic and electric properties of quantum vacuum
• A compact, robust, and transportable ultra-stable laser with a fractional frequency instability of $1\times 10^{-15}$
• A cavity-stabilized laser with acceleration sensitivity below $10^{-12}$/g
• Long 48-cm ULE cavities in vertical and horizontal orientations for Sr optical clock