Pound-Drever-Hall Feedforward: Laser Phase Noise Suppression beyond Feedback

Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) is a laser frequency stabilization technique widely used for building narrow-linewidth lasers. We develop a scheme that greatly expands its noise-suppression capability and bandwidth. The idea is simply to feedforward the residual PDH error signal of a locked laser to that laser again after a delay fiber. Demonstrating this idea on a common setup, we realize a phase noise suppression exceeding 37 dB at 2 MHz, setting a record one to two orders of magnitude better than previously reported feedforward schemes. Our method allows phase noise suppression capability equivalent to cavity filtering but does not suffer from limited power transmitted through the cavity.