Frequency stability of passively Q-switched non-planar ring oscillator under aircraft vibration
Abstract
Q-switched laser sources with exceptional frequency stability are required for many remote sensing applications. Airborne systems often require operation under significant vibration which can pose a challenge for injection seeded bulk lasers. An attractive option is the utilisation of a passively Q-switched Non-Planar Ring Oscillator (NPRO), which has the potential to offer highly stable single longitudinal mode output due in part to its monolithic construction. This paper describes measurement of the frequency stability of a passively Q-switched NPRO under simulated aircraft vibration, which was achieved using a custom designed Fabry-Perot etalon to interrogate the optical frequency of every laser pulse. With no vibration, the long term drift was found to be approximately 4MHz/min. With the drift removed, the laser frequency jitter demonstrated a standard deviation of better than 200kHz over 15 minutes, which was the measurement system noise limit. Under vibration, the worst case measurement had a drift of 8MHz/min and the jitter had a standard deviation of 2.09MHz.
- Publication:
-
Remote Sensing of Clouds and the Atmosphere XXIV
- Pub Date:
- October 2019
- DOI:
- 10.1117/12.2524876
- Bibcode:
- 2019SPIE11152E..0WW