All-electronic line width reduction in a semiconductor diode laser using a crystalline microresonator

This study examines the capability to significantly suppress the frequency noise of a semiconductor distributed feedback diode laser using a universally applicable approach: a combination of a high-Q crystalline whispering gallery mode microresonator reference and the Pound–Drever–Hall locking scheme using an all-electronic servo loop. An out-of-loop delayed self-heterodyne measurement system demonstrates the ability of this approach to reduce a test laser’s absolute line width by nearly a factor of 100. In addition, in-loop characterization of the laser stabilized using this method demonstrates a 1-kHz residual line width with reference to the resonator frequency. Based on these results, we propose that utilization of an all-electronic loop combined with the use of the wide transparency window of crystalline materials enable this approach to be readily applicable to diode lasers emitting in other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, especially in the UV and mid-IR .