Ultrastable offset-locked frequency-stabilized heterodyne laser source with water cooling

An ultrastable frequency-stabilized He–Ne laser with a water-cooling structure has been developed for a high-speed and high-accuracy heterodyne interferometer. To achieve high frequency stability and reproducibility, a two-mode He–Ne laser was offset locked to an iodine-stabilized laser. An improved synchronous multi-cycle offset frequency-measurement method with a gate time of an integer multiple of the modulation period was employed to remove the frequency-modulation effect on the offset-frequency counter. A water-cooling structure based on the double-helix structure was established to provide a stable and low-temperature working environment. This structure can remarkably reduce the frequency instability arising from the environmental temperature variation and the thermal pollution released from the laser to the environment. The experimental results indicate that the frequency stability according to the Allen variance is better than 2.3 × 10⁻¹¹ (τ 10 s) and the frequency reproducibility is better than 4.5 × 10⁻¹⁰.