Actively stabilized wavelength-insensitive carrier elimination from an electro-optically modulated laser beam

• DOI: 10.1364/josab.29.000646
• Publication Date: 2012-03-23T00:39:05Z
• Authors: Nathan Cooper; James Bateman; Alexander Dunning; Tim Freegarde
• Keywords: Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph); 0103 physical sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; 530; 01 natural sciences; 510; Physics - Atomic Physics; Physics - Optics; Optics (physics.optics)

9 pages, 5 figures<br/>We demonstrate a simple and robust technique for removal of the carrier wave from a phase-modulated laser beam, using a non-interferometric method that is insensitive to the modulation frequency and instead exploits the polarization-dependence of electro-optic modulation. An actively stabilized system using feedback via a liquid crystal cell yields long-term carrier suppression in excess of 28 dB at the expense of a 6.5 dB reduction in sideband power.<br/>