The effect of polarization control in loss-compensated recirculating delayed self-heterodyne interferometry measurement of laser linewidth

Abstract

In the implementation of the loss-compensated recirculating delayed self-heterodyne interferometry (LC-RDSHI) measurement of laser linewidth, we observe the fluctuations among the different orders of beat spectra, which are not expected according to theoretical analysis and may lead to the distortion of lineshape and inaccurate estimation of the laser linewidth. To explain the observation, we in this paper simplify the polarization model in the recirculating heterodyne ring interferometercontaining a polarization controller (PC) and point out the effect of the polarization controlin the LC-RDSHI measurement. The simulation result of our model explains well the observed fluctuations. © (2013) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.