Frequency discrimination characteristics of an elliptically polarized dual-polarization gas laser

This paper treats the intensity crossover phenomenon, which often occurs when a pair of orthogonally polarized laser oscillations is tuned across the atomic gain profile. It is shown theoretically that a very sensitive frequency discriminant can be obtained by appropriately adjusting the polarization ellipticity of such oscillations. In addition, experimental results are given which illustrate the characteristics of the discriminant and demonstrate its applicability to frequency stabilization.