• A recent gem regarding laser locking, with a great deal of high-quality material:
  R.W. Fox, C.W. Oates, and L. Hollberg, Stabilizing Diode Lasers to High Finesse Cavities, in "Experimental Methods in the Physical Sciences; Cavity-Enhanced Spectroscopies, Ch. 1, Vol 40, 46 p., (2001).
  
• We have borrowed various bits of design from Leo Hollberg at NIST (Boulder). Lots of diode laser stuff at his Optical Frequency Measurements Group.
  
• The mechanicals of our laser diode design is based on the Sussex design of Arnold et al.
  A.S.Arnold, J.S.Wilson and M.G.Boshier:"A simple extended-cavity diode laser", Rev.Sci.Instrum. 69 1236 (1998).
• The low-noise current source was originally designed by Jan Hall and Ken Libbrecht at JILA:
  K.G.Libbrecht and J.L.Hall: "A low-noise high-speed diode laser current controller", Rev. Sci. Instrum. 64 2133–2135 (1993).
  The circuit and PCB layout we use is a slightly modified version of the much-enhanced design from Ken Baldwin and Maarten Hoogerland at the Australian National University, Canberra, ACT. Here's their web page.
• Our temperature controller is a modified version of a design that originates from Bill Drury at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia. He based it on a paper by:
  R.J.Miller and H.F.Gleeson: "A computer interfaced high-stability temperature controller and heating stage for optical microscopy" Meas.Sci.Technol. 5 904–911 (1994).
• The lock-in amplifier and AOM drivers are similar to designs that we originally found on the extremely useful electronics web pages of Steve Gensemer (Phil Gould's group). The circuits there were apparently based on designs from Kurt Gibble, although it's not clear where they really started. The phase shifter is similar to one based on bipolar transistors in Horowitz and Hill, but using FETs, e.g. as shown on page 9 of National Semiconductor's Application Note AN-32. Some description of the lock-in can be found in the following paper:
  D Milic, W Lu, MD Hoogerland, M Blackshell, KGH Baldwin and SJ Buckman: "Improved spectral properties of diode lasers", Rev. Sci. Istrum. 68 3657–3659 (1997). Note that there are some errors in this paper, including a battery connected in reverse, improper biasing of the input FET, and converting the lockin reference from a sine wave to a square wave.

Anton Barty (PhD)
Imogen Colton (BSc Hons)
Phillip Gargano
Colin Hawthorn (BSc Hons)
Robert Scholten
Lincoln Turner (BSc Hons)
Chris Vale (PhD)
Mirek Walkiewicz (PhD, MSc)
Zivko Jovanovski

Our papers of relevance

Master PCB parts list (Excel spreadsheet) listing what components we buy from where. Includes part numbers and pricing, and is a useful starting point for shopping.

Beware: The part list has not been updated for the changes described in NEWS .

Suppliers we use are Tecs, Jaycar, Radio Parts Group (RPG), Insight electronics, ACD, Farnell and RS Components.
 

Datasheets

We have PDF datasheets for most of the components we use.  These can also be obtained directly from the manufacturers if you can't find the one you need in this directory.

Protel (PCB) files

We have collated the electronics together onto one large PCB board which contains all the electronics, including power supplies, needed to drive and lock a single laser. Unfortunately we have not had the time to update this for the changes to CLAUDIUS made to achieve narrow linewidths, but it's still a good starting point. The board is chopped into smaller boards for assembly, but getting the large board made commercially significantly reduces the manufacturing cost, as well as ensuring that you have everything required in one hit. We get our PCB boards made by BEC manufacturing in Brisbane, turn-around time approx. one week, cost depends on quantity ordered. We are not providing the PCB source files themselves. If you want boards, BEC manufacturing will make them for you, if they have authorisation from us. If you would like to have some boards made, please e-mail us.

Atom optics