Microcontroller based scanning transfer cavity lock for long-term laser frequency stabilization

TL;DR

This paper introduces a compact, all-digital scanning transfer cavity lock system using a microcontroller to achieve long-term laser frequency stabilization with high accuracy and dynamic scanning capabilities.

Contribution

It presents a novel microcontroller-based implementation of the scanning transfer cavity lock that corrects for environmental drifts and enables wide-range dynamic laser scanning.

Findings

Achieved 0.9 MHz accuracy in laser frequency locking.

Demonstrated dynamic wide-range laser scanning while maintaining lock.

Enabled precise atomic transition interrogation.

Abstract

We present a compact all-digital implementation of a scanning transfer cavity lock (STCL) for long-term laser frequency stabilization. An interrupt-driven state machine is employed to realize the STCL, with the capability to correct for frequency drifts in the slave laser frequency due to measured changes in the lab environmental conditions. We demonstrate an accuracy of 0.9 MHz for master laser and slave laser wavelengths of 556 nm and 798 nm as an example. The slave laser is also demonstrated to dynamically scan over a wide frequency range while retaining its lock, allowing us to accurately interrogate atomic transitions.