Homodyne locking of a squeezer

We report on the successful implementation of an approach to locking the frequencies of an optical parametric oscillator (OPO)-based squeezed-vacuum source and its driving laser. The technique allows the simultaneous measurement of the phase shifts induced by a cavity, which may be used for the purposes of frequency locking, as well as the simultaneous measurement of the sub-quantum-noise-limited (sub-QNL) phase quadrature output of the OPO. The homodyne locking technique is cheap, easy to implement, and has the distinct advantage that subsequent homodyne measurements are automatically phase locked. The homodyne locking technique is also unique in that it is a sub-QNL frequency discriminator. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America