Heterodyne beatings between frequency-shifted feedback lasers

Hugues Guillet de Chatellus; Eric Lacot; Olivier Jacquin; Wilfried Glastre; Olivier Hugon

doi:10.1364/OL.37.000791

Heterodyne beatings between frequency-shifted feedback lasers

Opt Lett. 2012 Mar 1;37(5):791-3. doi: 10.1364/OL.37.000791.

Authors

Hugues Guillet de Chatellus¹, Eric Lacot, Olivier Jacquin, Wilfried Glastre, Olivier Hugon

Affiliation

¹ CNRS/Université Grenoble 1, Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Physique, UMR 5588, Grenoble F-38041, France. hguillet@ujf‑grenoble.fr

PMID: 22378395
DOI: 10.1364/OL.37.000791

Abstract

Frequency-shifted feedback (FSF) lasers are potential candidates for long distance telemetry due to the appearance of beatings in the noise spectrum at the output of a homodyne interferometer: the frequencies of these beatings vary linearly with the path delay. In this Letter we demonstrate that these beatings also occur in the heterodyne mixing of two identical, but distinct, FSF lasers. This phenomenon is explained by the passive cavity model and is exploited to characterize the time-spectrum properties of FSF lasers. Consequences on telemetry with FSF lasers are presented.