Has anyone achieved ~1 mK temperature stability with TEC control?

[7k7k]

Hi everyone,


I’ve been working with laser diode systems and optical setups where temperature drift can significantly affect wavelength stability.


Recently I came across a temperature control setup capable of around ~1 mK (±0.001 °C) stability using thermoelectric control.


It made me curious about what level of temperature stability people usually aim for in laser or photonics systems.


For example:
• laser diode stabilization
• spectroscopy experiments
• detector cooling


Is millikelvin-level stability common in real setups?


Would love to hear about your experience.

[mixedgas]

I'm doing good to hold .01 C on crystal ovens on OPO systems I used to work on. Idea was to run much hotter than room temperature in our case and have some deliberate loss in the system to have a reasonable time constant for the PID. No, I don't have drawings as the system is under NDA.

Steve

BTW:

This fellow is one of the origins of the MilliKelvin claim. He used to hang out on optics forums 10-15 years ago:

A microcontroller-based driver to stabilize the temperature of an optical stage to within 1 mK in the range 4–38 C, using a Peltier heat pump and a thermistor sensor

Instrumentation and Measurement Science

https://doi.org/10.1088/0957-0233/7/11/015

By Bill Sloman

[7k7k]

Thanks for sharing your experience!


Holding around 0.01 °C on crystal ovens sounds very reasonable for OPO systems.


In our recent experiments we’ve been working with TEC-based temperature control using high resolution sensing and optimized PID tuning, and we are seeing stability close to the 1 mK level under controlled conditions.


I’m curious whether that level of stability would actually make a noticeable difference in OPO crystal performance or wavelength stability.