Abstract
This dissertation presents a stand-alone ’self-locking’ laser. The aim of the project was to develop a prototype of a ’self -locking’ laser that requires no user input, other than to turn the laser on. The prototype was developed to be used as a repump laser for laser cooling experiments; however, its design is aimed at a market of individuals who do not have the background skills required to lock a laser. The project uses a frequency modulated spectroscopy setup to obtain the sub-Doppler atomic spectrum of Rubidium, which is demodulated to obtain zero-crossing linear slopes at the exact points of each atomic transition and crossover transition. The frequency modulation for the spectroscopy setup, the signal analysis, as well as the automatic locking and re-locking of the laser is all implemented digitally using an Arduino open source microcontroller. The distributed feedback laser used for the design is fully characterized and the lock of the ’self-locking’ laser is analyzed in detail. The finished prototype has been used in a laser cooling experiment as the repump beam to investigate how it performs under real experimental conditions.