Tilt locking: a new technique for locking a laser to an optical cavity

Summary form only given. Tilt locking is a simple technique providing an error signal for locking a laser to a Fabry-Perot cavity. This technique, utilizes a misalignment of the laser with respect to the cavity to produce a non-resonant spatial mode. By observing the interference between the carrier and the spatial mode on a two element photodiode, a high sensitivity frequency discriminator can be obtained. Tilt locking offers a number of potential benefits over existing locking schemes including low cost, high sensitivity and simple implementation. We present recent results for locking two Nd:YAG lasers to a single cavity.