Investigation of single-frequency semiconductor lasers with a fiber Michelson interferometer

A fiber Michelson interferometer, which is an analog of a scanning Michelson interferometer, was constructed from single-mode fiber waveguides and several highly directional Y-type couplers operating at the wavelength of 0.85 μ. It was found that this interferometer could be used to investigate the coherence of radiation from single-frequency lasers with a spectral line width in the range from 10 kHz to 1 GHz. The experimental dependences of the degree of coherence on the optical path difference were determined for cw single-frequency AlGaAs double heterostructure lasers with an external dispersive resonator, operating in the regime of self-stabilization of single-frequency emission. It was found that the width of the spectral lines was between 10 kHz and 1 MHz, and that the line profiles were Lorentzian.