Sub 23 μHz instantaneous linewidth and frequency stability measurements of the beat note from an offset phase locked single frequency heterodyned Nd:YAG laser system.

We report, what is to the best of our knowledge, the narrowest instantaneous linewidth measurement of the beat frequency between two phase locked heterodyned 1.319 μm Nd:YAG lasers. At both 65 kHz and 31.7 GHz beat frequencies, we measured the instantaneous 3 dB linewidth of the optically-generated microwave tones to be < 22.8 μHz, limited only by the minimum instrument resolution. Allan deviation measurements indicate that the laser system follows a 5 MHz quartz reference oscillator to stability levels of σy (1s) = 8.4 × 10-12 . At 10.24 GHz, the laser system follows a sapphire loaded cavity oscillator to stability levels of σy (1s) = 1.6 × 10-11 . For these measurements, the optical beat note closely follows the linewidth and stability of the driving microwave frequency reference.