Stabilization of optical phase/frequency of a laser system: application to a commercial dye laser with an external stabilizer

We present a comprehensive and quasi-tutorial review of the theory for analyzing the optical power spectrum of an optical field that has noise modulations of both the amplitude and the phase. We also present experimental results of the frequency stabilization of a commercial dye laser to a high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity (0.49-Hz resulting full linewidth) and of the optical phase locking of the dye laser to a second reference laser (putting 97% of the optical power into the carrier) using an external stabilizer scheme. This external optical phase/frequency stabilization technique can be applied to virtually any cw laser system. © 1993 Optical Society of America.