Abstract

Recent experiments have shown that there exists a coupling between the intensity noise of the single-mode pump in a diode-laser pumped monolithic Nd:YAG laser and the laser's frequency noise. These experiments have shown that the coupling is strong enough to frequency lock the laser to a reference cavity by feeding back to the intensity of the pump source (as shown in Fig. 1) and that the intensity noise of the laser can be reduced over the active bandwidth of the frequency feedback loop. This technique has been dubbed "current lock" [1]. Here we incorporate the coupling between pump intensity noise and laser frequency noise into a linearised quantum mechanical model for a solid-state laser and model the behaviour of that laser under closed-loop feedback [2].

© 2007 IEEE