Locking the frequency of lasers to an optical cavity at the $1.6 \times 10^{-17}$ relative instability level

Abstract

We stabilized the frequencies of two independent Nd:YAG lasers to two adjacent longitudinal modes of a high-finesse Fabry-P\'erot resonator and obtained a beat frequency instability of 6.3 mHz at an integration time of 40 s. Referred to a single laser, this is $1.6\times10^{-17}$ relative to the laser frequency, and $1.3\times10^{-6}$ relative to the full width at half maximum of the cavity resonance. The amplitude spectrum of the beat signal had a FWHM of 7.8 mHz. This stable frequency locking is of importance for next-generation optical clock interrogation lasers and fundamental physics tests.