WIAS Preprint No. 2983, (2022)

Improved laser linewidth estimation from self-heterodyne beat note measurements using parametric Wiener filters



Authors

  • Kantner, Markus
    ORCID: 0000-0003-4576-3135
  • Mertenskötter, Lutz
    ORCID: 0000-0001-5074-2721

2020 Mathematics Subject Classification

  • 37N20 60G10 60G35, 62M20, 82C31

Keywords

  • Laser linewidth, phase noise, narrow-linewidth, semiconductor lasers, Wiener deconvolution, self-heterodyne beat note measurement, non-Markovian noise, Langevin equations, stochastic differential equations

DOI

10.20347/WIAS.PREPRINT.2983

Abstract

Self-heterodyne beat note measurement techniques are widely used for the experimental char- acterization of the phase noise power spectral density (PSD) and the spectral linewidth of lasers. The measured data, however, must be corrected for the transfer function of the interferometer in a post-processing routine. The standard approach disregards the measurement noise and thereby induces uncontrolled artifacts in the reconstructed noise PSDs. We introduce an improved data post-processing routine based on a parametric Wiener filter (power spectrum equalization, PSE), that is potentially free of reconstruction artifacts provided a good estimate for the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is supplied. Based on the PSE filter, we describe a new method for the estimation of the intrinsic laser linewidth. Our method yields accurate estimates even in the case of strong measurement noise, where the intrinsic linewidth plateau is not visible using the standard method. We demonstrate the method using simulated data from a stochastic laser rate equation model.

Appeared in

  • Opt. Express, 31 (2023), pp. 15994--16009, DOI 10.1364/OE.485866 . Different title: Accurate evaluation of self-heterodyne laser linewidth measurements using Wiener filters

Download Documents