Short- and long-term frequency stabilization of a He-Ne laser using a Fabry-Perot cavity locked to the lamb dip

We have developed a frequency-stabilization system for the He-Ne laser using an external Fabry-Perot cavity which is locked to the Lamb dip of the laser. The cavity serves as a frequency discriminator for high-frequency noise suppression, while the length of the Fabry-Perot cavity is controlled, reffered to the Lamb dip, in order to eliminate low-frequency fluctuations. The frequency noise of a laser stabilized with the cavity suspended in a vacuum tank can be suppressed to about 1 $$0.1Hz/\sqrt {Hz} $$ at around 100 Hz by an FM-sideband locking method. The oscillation frequency is fixed to the Lamb dip at low frequency by controlling the cavity length thermally. The frequency fluctuation around the Lamb dip was estimated to be ～ 2.3 MHz.