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Low Frequency Fluctuations and Multimode Operation of a Semiconductor Laser with Optical Feedback

Huyet, Guillaume; Balle, Salvador; Giudici, Massimo; Green, Charles K.; Giacomelli, Gianni; Tredicce, Jorge R.
Optics Commun. 149, 341-347 (1998)

We experimentally investigate low frequency fluctuations (LFF) in a Fabry-Perot semiconductor laser with optical
feedback from an external mirror. During LFF, the time resolved optical spectrum shows that many longitudinal
modes of the solitary laser enter into the transients. After each LFF event, the excited solitary-laser modes
recover similarly. However, the recovery for the power in each mode is much slower than the recovery of the
total power. The intermode exchange of energy during the recovery indicates that a single-longitudinal mode
description of such LFF behavior will not capture important underlying dynamics. The relevance of multimode
dynamics is confirmed in a feedback experiment where the external mirror is substituted by a diffraction
grating.

(Postscript file, 7 pages, 791 kb)