FPGA-based Pound-Drever-Hall electronics with automatic relock

The present Technical Report describes the development of prototype FPGA-based frequency stabilization electronics for compact laser frequency control with the Pound- Drever-Hall technique. The electronic control system comprised an Altera Cyclone II FPGA board and a daughter board with two 100ks/s 16 bit DA, 50 Ms/s AD and 12 bits DA; it provided a 500 kHz modulation signal obtained with direct digital synthesis and direct demodulation of the sampled frequency error signal. The automatic lock-relock feature was validated experimentally. The activity was in part funded by the European Metrology Research Programme EMRP (JRP IND14 Frequency). The EMRP is jointly funded by the EMRP participating countries within EURAMET and the European Union.