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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Intensity correlations of a noise-driven diode laser

G. T. Foster, S. L. Mielke, Luis A. Orozco

Published Nov 1, 1998• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We couple noise into the driving current of a laser diode to produce correlated light. We characterize the intensity correlations of the laser with two different techniques: two-detector photon coincidence and analysis of the photocurrent from a single detector. The light exhibits bunching with a magnitude and characteristic time set by the bandwidth and the amplitude of the noise modulating the laser driving current. A simple model based on amplitude modulation of the laser intensity agrees with the measured correlation functions. The bunched light can be used to probe systems that are sensitive to intensity correlations.

DOI
10.1364/josab.15.002646

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We couple noise into the driving current of a laser diode to produce correlated light. We characterize the intensity correlations of the laser with two different techniques: two-detector photon coincidence and analysis of the photocurrent from a single detector. The light exhibits bunching with a magnitude and characteristic time set by the bandwidth and the amplitude of the noise modulating the laser driving current. A simple model based on amplitude modulation of the laser intensity agrees with the measured correlation functions. The bunched light can be used to probe systems that are sensitive to intensity correlations.
The low-frequency intensity noise of high-quantum-efficiency lasers or light-emitting diodes (LED's) is dominated by the pump noise. By coupling two or more semiconductor lasers (or LED's) in series with a current source, the pump noise of the two lasers will be equal, and the intensity noise of the lasers will be highly correlated. It is shown that one may generate sub-Poissonian light by measuring the intensity fluctuations of one of the beams and feeding back (or forward) the information to regulate the other photon beam. The generation scheme is shown to have much in common with intensity-correlated twin beam generation from nondegenerate optical parametric oscillators.
Semiconductor lasers are particularly well suited for the implementation of pump-noise suppression, yielding a reduction of the intensity noise in the laser. In this simple picture, the maximal amount of squeezing is equal to the quantum efficiency. However, experimental results on intensity noise reduction by pump-noise suppression are usually above this limit. This discrepancy suggests that additional noise sources must be involved. Here we successfuly interpret the full noise behavior of a single-mode laser diode far above threshold by considering two excess noise sources: the leakage current fluctuations across the laser and the Petermann excess noise. We have estimated the contribution of each noise source using the results of the correlations between the laser output intensity noise and the voltage fluctuations across the laser diode (light-voltage correlations) and obtained good agreement between our theory and experimental results.
We use balanced homodyne detection to characterize light from a diode laser as it crosses the threshold. We measure the single-time second-order correlation function g(2), and also extract the photon number distribution. Just above the laser threshold, we find that the measured g(2) exceeds the prediction of the semiclassical single-mode laser model. From the reconstructed photon number distributions, we conclude that this excess is due to emission from nonlasing modes. For higher pumping current, the light noise increases due to a different mechanism, possibly mode competition or mode partition noise.
Introduction The investigation of the coherence properties of light sources has traditionally involved the study of correlation functions of different orders of the electric field (Born and Wolf, 1975; Mandel and Wolf, 1965). Field and intensity correlation functions have been measured for laser light (for a review, see Lax and Zwanziger, 1973) and have been compared with predictions obtained from quantum laser theory (Haken, 1970, 1981; Lax, 1969; Louisell, 1973; Sargent, Scully and Lamb, 1974). This was, in fact, one of the major confirmations of the correctness of the basic formalism of quantum laser theory. Most of the experiments that probed the coherence properties of lasers were, however, carried out on a very limited variety of lasing media. Interest was also centered on the regime of operation near threshold, where the light from the laser is extremely weak; hence photoelectron counting and correlation techniques were developed for the measurement of coherence properties of the laser light. While these early experiments were performed with the main intent of testing the basic theory, the large variety of lasers now available, and their ever more demanding applications, make it necessary to develop new methods for the measurement and analysis of laser fluctuations. These techniques should be applicable to the measurement of noise in high power lasers; at the same time, in order to delineate the limits of usage, they must be sensitive enough to quantitatively determine the quantum mechanical sources of noise which may lie buried in external noise that is many orders of magnitude larger.
Suppression of the closed-loop photocurrent fluctuation below the amplifier dark noise was observed in both a negative-feedback light-emitting diode and a laser diode. We apply the concept of an anticorrelation light state proposed by Masalov et al to analyze the anticorrelation effect between the measured photocurrent fluctuation and the amplifier dark noise, which successfully explains our experimental observations. Our theoretical analysis also yields the squeezed spectrum of the light intensity fluctuation in the loop and the correlation coefficient between the photocurrent and the amplifier noise.