Abstract

Semiconductor injection lasers are frequently operated in external cavities for spectral narrowing and mode stabilization. However, the external cavity laser can exhibit coherence collapse, a catastrophic broadening of the spectral linewidth to tens of gigahertz under moderate external feedback.¹ For fundamental and practical reasons, one needs to know whether this behavior is stochastic (noise-driven) or deterministic, and how the final coherence-collapsed state is attained.

© 1992 Optical Society of America