Simple digital system for tuning and long-term frequency stabilization of a CW Ti:Sapphire laser

We have implemented a simple digital system for long-term frequency stabilization and locking to an arbitrary wavelength of the single-frequency ring CW Ti:Sapphire laser. This system is built using two confocal Fabry-Perot cavities, one of which is used to narrow the short-term linewidth of the laser and the other to improve the long-term stability of the laser frequency. The length of the second cavity is stabilized using the radiation from an external-cavity diode laser locked to an atomic transition. Our system is an improvement of a commercial Tekhnoscan laser lock. This system has been successfully used in our experiments on high-resolution laser spectroscopy of ultracold rubidium Ryd…