Simple iodine reference at 1064 nm for absolute laser frequency determination in space applications.

Abstract

Using an iodine cell with fixed gas pressure, we built a simple frequency reference at $1064\mathrm{nm}$ with $10\mathrm{MHz}$ absolute accuracy and used it to demonstrate deterministic phase locking between two single-frequency lasers. The reference was designed to be as simple as possible, and it does not use a cooler or frequency modulator. This system should be useful, especially for space interferometric missions such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna.