Effects of undesired external reflections on a laser diode feedback interferometer for measurement of displacements without ambiguity

Author

Arce-Diego, J.L. ; Giuliani, G. ; Cepeda-Echevarria, R.M. ; Cubián, D. Perda ; Fernandez, L. A Fernandez

Author_Institution

Photonic Eng. Group, Cantabria Univ., Santander, Spain

Volume

2

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

653

Abstract

When a small fraction of the power emitted from a single frequency laser is allowed to reenter the laser cavity, as in the case of a remote surface either reflective or diffusive illuminated by the laser spot, an injection modulation of the cavity field is generated, both in amplitude and frequency. By means of this technique known as laser diode feedback interferometry is possible to recover the displacement of the remote surface without ambiguity. When an additional external undesired (spurious) reflection appears, the stability conditions of the system can be modified and its performances for measurement of displacements can be degraded. In this work we present a detailed theoretical analysis for a semiconductor laser in an external cavity in presence of an undesired external reflection. The limit of the stable and bistability operating regime, useful for displacement measurement are determined as a function of the undesired external cavity parameters

Keywords

displacement measurement; laser cavity resonators; laser feedback; light interferometers; light interferometry; light reflection; measurement by laser beam; semiconductor lasers; cavity field; effective mirror; injection modulation; laser diode feedback interferometer; reflecting target cavity; remote surface; single frequency laser; spurious cavity; stability conditions; unambiguous displacement measurement; undesired external cavity parameters; undesired external reflections effect; Amplitude modulation; Diode lasers; Displacement measurement; Frequency; Interferometry; Laser feedback; Optical reflection; Power generation; Power lasers; Surface emitting lasers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, 2001. LEOS 2001. The 14th Annual Meeting of the IEEE

Conference_Location

San Diego, CA

ISSN

1092-8081

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7105-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/LEOS.2001.968983

Filename

968983