A long-term frequency stabilized deep ultraviolet laser for Mg+ ions trapping experiments

Abstract

As many precision laser spectroscopy experiments require frequency stabilized lasers, development of long-term stabilized lasers is of great interest. In this work, we report long-term frequency stabilization of a 280 nm deep ultraviolet laser to a high precision wavemeter with digital servo control such that the long-term drift of the laser frequency was greatly reduced. Long-term laser frequency drift was measured with a fiber frequency comb system over 8 h. After locking, the maximum drift rate of the 280 nm laser was lowered from 576 MHz/h to 6.4 MHz/h. With proper environment control of the wavemeter, the maximum drift rate of the 280 nm laser was further lowered to less than 480 kHz/h. The locked laser system was successfully used in a Mg(+) ions trapping experiment, which was also discussed in this work.