Consistency of splitting frequency difference with longtudinal modes spacing variation in Zeeman dual-frequency laser

Abstract

Phase anisotropy in laser resonant cavity will bring about an influence on laser frequency and polarization, such as laser frequency splitting, of which the frequency difference is determined by their introduced phase retardation. For a helium-neon laser with a small phase retardation in the cavity, the two split modes are very close to each other whose burned holes are overlapped. Then only one mode oscillates while the other is always in lock-in state due to strong mode competition, which forms hidden frequency split. Meanwhile the spacing between adjacent longitudinal modes deviates from original value and produces a certain variation equal to twice the hidden splitting frequency difference. As a result the longitudinal modes spacing variation is dominated by the phase retardation. On the other hand, by applying transverse magnetic field to a laser tube along the polarization direction, the neon atoms will undergo transverse Zeeman effect and be divided into two groups to provide the gain for polarized light beams parallel to the magnetic field and perpendicular to the magnetic field respectively. Then the laser mode competition is greatly weakened so that the two split modes can oscillate simultaneously to obtain the frequency difference. In order to make profound study of the consistency between longitudinal mode spacing variation and splitting mode frequency difference in the presence of transverse magnetic field, the samples of tilted quartz plate or half wave plate is placed into laser cavity to produce phase retardation. By the two mentioned methods, the splitting frequency difference varying with phase retardation of samples is deduced to make a comparison. Two measurements show that the average relative deviation is less than 1%, while the experimental results accord with theoretical analyses quite well. In this way splitting frequency difference of Zeeman dual-frequency laser can be determined accurately, and a new method to measure the phase retardation of half wave plate is provided.