Design and performance of compact iodine stabilized He-Ne lasers at lambda =633 nm with a short optical resonator

Abstract

The authors deal with portable He-Ne lasers at 633 nm, frequency stabilized by saturated absorption in 127I2. The construction of two different types of laser heads and electronic servo control units is described. The Invar head with Invar resonator and interchangeable elements (mirrors, discharge tube and iodine cell) yields 14 hyperfine structure (HFS) components (a-n) of the R(127)11-5 absorption line of the molecular iodine at 633 nm. The fused silica head, an integral structure laser containing a discharge tube and an iodine cell in a fused silica resonator, offers 18 HFS components (a-r). The principle of the arrangement of the electronic circuits in the electronic unit is presented and the manual or automatic tuning procedure of the chosen components is described. Some results and applications of these lasers are presented in brief.