Modulation-free optical locking of an external-cavity diode laser to a filter cavity

Optical locking to a filter cavity is an effective method to eliminate the limitations of an external-cavity diode laser, such as broad spontaneous emission backgrounds and frequency jitters. Stable operation of the optical locking requires simultaneous control of the feedback phase and the diode-laser frequency. Frequency dither is usually used to extract the two error signals, but this causes extra frequency modulation in the output beam. A modulation-free method for deriving the error signals by modulating the laser-cavity coupling strength is demonstrated with a violet diode laser. A modulation-free linewidth upper limit of about 7 kHz for a 1 s measurement is realized by the method.