Errors in PDH offset locking due to spurious spectral features
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arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866911300518412288 |
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| author | Hildebrand, Roame A. Wang, Wance Goham, Connor Restelli, Alessandro Britton, Joseph W. |
| author_facet | Hildebrand, Roame A. Wang, Wance Goham, Connor Restelli, Alessandro Britton, Joseph W. |
| contents | The Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) technique is widely used to stabilize the frequency of lasers. Here we report on a routinely underestimated source of error in PDH offset-locking: a shift in the lock point due to the unintended interaction between residual optical sidebands and higher-order spatial modes in misaligned Fabry-Perot cavities. Significant frequency deviations-up to 50% of the cavity linewidth-can arise when the optical offset is obtained from a sinusoidally driven EOM. We measure this deviation experimentally, find agreement with a simple model, and show how a spectrally-pure frequency offset can reduce the deviation by an order of magnitude. Our findings draw attention to a systematic effect of importance to precision optical spectroscopy, optical clocks, and quantum information science. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_03900 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Errors in PDH offset locking due to spurious spectral features Hildebrand, Roame A. Wang, Wance Goham, Connor Restelli, Alessandro Britton, Joseph W. Optics Atomic Physics The Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) technique is widely used to stabilize the frequency of lasers. Here we report on a routinely underestimated source of error in PDH offset-locking: a shift in the lock point due to the unintended interaction between residual optical sidebands and higher-order spatial modes in misaligned Fabry-Perot cavities. Significant frequency deviations-up to 50% of the cavity linewidth-can arise when the optical offset is obtained from a sinusoidally driven EOM. We measure this deviation experimentally, find agreement with a simple model, and show how a spectrally-pure frequency offset can reduce the deviation by an order of magnitude. Our findings draw attention to a systematic effect of importance to precision optical spectroscopy, optical clocks, and quantum information science. |
| title | Errors in PDH offset locking due to spurious spectral features |
| topic | Optics Atomic Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.03900 |