[RFC] specification - Githubissues

hartytp commented 4 years ago

This repo should be called Stabilizer_homodyne or "homodyner" or something like that...

Idea is to build a homodyne detector AFE for stabilizer. Design will be based on Pounder but with the following changes:

Mixer LO is driven by an ADF PLL (freq range TBD but 1GHz to >=3.5GHz) referenced to an external (SMA) clock (can also have an XO on board for debugging)
no LO phase shifter, so not targetting PDH locks etc
Has a "modulator" RF output which is a second ADF PLL. This PLL is referenced to a VCXO that's tuned by one of Stabilizer's DAC outputs. This can be used to drive an AOM/EOM/etc that modulates a laser to achieve lock.
alternatively, the DAC output can be used directly as a tuning output (e.g. to steer a laser PZT etc)
f_modulator doesn't need to be the same as f_lo (e.g. if there is frequency doubling in the optical path)
only needs to be single channel, but can add two channels if we can be bothered
if there is a use-case for it we can consider extending the frequency range to 7GHz

Roadmap here is to fix a specification for this now-ish but probably not actually complete the design until Pounder has been tested.

cc @airwoodix

dhslichter commented 4 years ago

oh god the name 😀

gkasprow commented 3 years ago

Does anybody need this module?

sinara-hw / Homodyner