Fully digital frequency stabilization of IR fiber-coupled laser

We present a stabilized semiconductor laser system designed to operate as a fiber-optic front-end master oscillator of a pulsed high-power iodine laser Prague Asterix Laser System (PALS). The replacement of the PALS master oscillator is a part of a broader effort to rebuild PALS into a laser generating shorter pulses with higher pulse power by the technique of optical parametric chirped pulse amplification. With an operating wavelength of 1315.15nm the stabilized laser master oscillator is based on a telecommunication single-frequency distributed feedback diode. The frequency stabilization is derived from transitions in thermally dissociated iodine. Locking to the selected transition is fully automatic and the control system employs a unique combination of control loops derived from temperature and absorption to overcome the problem of narrow locking range of a single absorption line.

[1]  Petr Jedlicka.  Instrumentation for narrow-linewidth semiconductor laser , 1999, Wave and Quantum Aspects of Contemporary Optics.

[2]  Thomas M. Stace,et al.  DESIGN NOTE: Laser offset-frequency locking using a frequency-to-voltage converter , 1998 .

[3]  G. Hager,et al.  Diode-laser Zeeman spectroscopy of atomic iodine , 2000 .

[4]  Tasshi Dennis,et al.  Wavelength references for 1300-nm wavelength-division multiplexing , 2002 .

[5]  Theodor W. Hänsch,et al.  Complete Hyperfine Structure of a Molecular Iodine Line , 1971 .

[6]  S Fredin-Picard,et al.  A Study of Contamination in 127I2 Cells Using Laser-Induced Fluorescence , 1989 .

[7]  Ian N. Ross,et al.  The prospects for ultrashort pulse duration and ultrahigh intensity using optical parametric chirped pulse amplifiers , 1997 .

[8]  T. King,et al.  Atomic absorption of thermally dissociated iodine for laser applications , 1977 .

[9]  Manuel Barbosa,et al.  An overview of controller area network , 1999 .

[10]  W. Ernst,et al.  A molecular beam laser-microwave double-resonance spectrometer for precise measurements of high temperature molecules , 1983 .

[11]  S. Davis,et al.  Transition probability and collision broadening of the 1.3-μm transition of atomic iodine , 1983 .

[12]  John L. Hall,et al.  A low‐noise high‐speed diode laser current controller , 1993 .

[13]  Josef Lazar,et al.  Tunable extended-cavity diode laser stabilized on iodine at λ = 633 nm , 2000 .

[14]  Josef Lazar,et al.  Electronics for He-Ne-I2 stabilized laser with digital control , 1997 .