Statistical properties of frequency shifted feedback lasers

International audienceWe evidence experimentally the statistical properties of frequency shifted feedback (FSF) lasers through measurements of the homodyne beat signal and interferometric autocorrelation of a dye FSF laser at the output of a Michelson interferometer. The FSF laser is found to show thermal fluctuations and photon bunching. Moreover whereas the degree of first-order coherence vanishes beyond the coherence length of the FSF source, the degree of second-order coherence exhibits periodic revivals far beyond the coherence length, with a period equal to the cavity roundtrip time. Our observations are in good agreement with the theoretical treatment of Yatsenko et al. [L.P. Yatsenko, B.W. Shore, K. Bergmann, Opt. Comm. 236 (2004) 183] and validate the description of the output field of a FSF laser by a broadband cyclostationary thermal field

λ/2 fringe-spacing interferometer

International audienceThe precision of interferometry is directly linked to the fringe spacing of the recorded interferogram. Whereas all interferometric devices show a fringe spacing equal to a wavelength of the laser light we present a novel scheme of a two-beam interferometer exhibiting a fringe spacing reduced by a factor of 2; the direct detection of the beat signal is replaced with the monitoring of the fluorescence of a twofold degenerate atomic system resonant with the laser. The λ/2 fringe spacing in the fluorescence signal is demonstrated with a hot sodium vapor excited by a broadband laser tuned to the D1 line. In the saturation regime, the dark fringes are expected to be extremely narrow, leading to the possibility of nanoscale displacement measurements or atom localization

The hypothesis of the moving comb in frequency shifted feedback lasers

International audienceThe use of frequency-shifted feedback (FSF) lasers in optical metrology is based on a unique coherence property: the appearance of beats in the noise spectrum at the output of a two-beam interferometer, whose frequencies vary linearly with the path delay of the interferometer. A description of the output of a FSF laser as a moving comb of optical frequencies is generally admitted to explain these specific coherence properties. Here starting from the model of a passive FSF cavity seeded by spontaneous emission we give a rigorous description of the time-spectrum properties of FSF lasers and show that the moving comb exists only in the limit of small frequency shift

Plenoptic microscope based on laser optical feedback imaging (LOFI)

We present an overview of the performances of a plenoptic microscope which combines the high sensitivity of a laser optical feedback imaging setup , the high resolution of optical synthetic aperture and a shot noise limited signal to noise ratio by using acoustic photon tagging. By using an adapted phase filtering, this microscope allows phase drift correction and numerical aberration compensation (defocusing, coma, astigmatism ...). This new kind of microscope seems to be well adapted to make deep imaging through scattering and heterogeneous media

Acousto-optic laser optical feedback imaging

We present a photon noise and diffraction limited imaging method combining the imaging laser and ultrasonic waves. The laser optical feedback imaging (LOFI) technique is an ultrasensitive imaging method for imaging objects through or embedded within a scattering medium. However, LOFI performances are dramatically limited by parasitic optical feedback occurring in the experimental setup. In this work, we have tagged the ballistic photons by an acousto-optic effect in order to filter the parasitic feedback effect and to reach the theoretical and ultimate sensitivity of the LOFI technique. We present the principle and the experimental setup of the acousto-optic laser optical feedback imaging (AO-LOFI) technique, and we demonstrate the suppression of the parasitic feedback

Real-time high-resolution heterodyne-based measurements of spectral dynamics in fibre lasers

Conventional tools for measurement of laser spectra (e.g. optical spectrum analysers) capture data averaged over a considerable time period. However, the generation spectrum of many laser types may involve spectral dynamics whose relatively fast time scale is determined by their cavity round trip period, calling for instrumentation featuring both high temporal and spectral resolution. Such real-time spectral characterisation becomes particularly challenging if the laser pulses are long, or they have continuous or quasi-continuous wave radiation components. Here we combine optical heterodyning with a technique of spatiooral intensity measurements that allows the characterisation of such complex sources. Fast, round-trip-resolved spectral dynamics of cavity-based systems in real-time are obtained, with temporal resolution of one cavity round trip and frequency resolution defined by its inverse (85 ns and 24 MHz respectively are demonstrated). We also show how under certain conditions for quasi-continuous wave sources, the spectral resolution could be further increased by a factor of 100 by direct extraction of phase information from the heterodyned dynamics or by using double time scales within the spectrogram approach

Coherence properties of modeless lasers

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Efficiency of 2-photon polychromatic laser guide stars

International audiencePolychromatic laser guide stars (PLGS) are created by resonant excitation of the mesospheric sodium by two pulsed lasers at 589 nm and 569 nm respectively. The efficiency of this process is investigated numerically by means of both Bloch equations and rate equations models. The influence of numerous laser parameters is studied. For 2×25 W laser average power the return flux is below 105 photons/s/m2.[less

Toward a large bandwidth photonic correlator for infrared heterodyne interferometry

Context. Infrared heterodyne interferometry has been proposed as a practical alternative for recombining a large number of telescopes over kilometric baselines in the mid-infrared. However, the current limited correlation capacities impose strong restrictions on the sensitivity of this appealing technique. Aims. In this paper, we propose to address the problem of transport and correlation of wide-bandwidth signals over kilometric distances by introducing photonic processing in infrared heterodyne interferometry. Methods. We describe the architecture of a photonic double-sideband correlator for two telescopes, along with the experimental demonstration of this concept on a proof-of-principle test bed. Results. We demonstrate the a posteriori correlation of two infrared signals previously generated on a two-telescope simulator in a double-sideband photonic correlator. A degradation of the signal-to-noise ratio of 13%, equivalent to a noise factor NF = 1.15, is obtained through the correlator, and the temporal coherence properties of our input signals are retrieved from these measurements. Conclusions. Our results demonstrate that photonic processing can be used to correlate heterodyne signals with a potentially large increase of detection bandwidth. These developments open the way to photonic processing of wide bandwidth signals for mid-infrared heterodyne interferometry, in particular for a large number of telescopes and for direct imager recombiners