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Abstract

This thesis presents the implementation of the Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) locking technique for stabilising a laser to a high-finesse optical reference cavity. The ultimate goal is to realise a stable and accurate frequency reference for high-precision spectroscopy experiments on highly charged ions in a superconducting Paul trap. This work details the construction of a housing for the ultra-low expansion glass (ULE) resonator, as well as the analysis of different intensity signals during the incoupling process and the initial PDH operation. First successful locking was achieved, although with limited stability, possibly due to insufficient feedback bandwidth or operating the cavity in air at the current time. External perturbations such as temperature and pressure fluctuations that could lead to the current instability and noise level were identified and work is ongoing to improve these aspects, including by operating the cavity in vacuum for which the housing is already prepared.