Simple method for measuring the linewidth enhancement factor of semiconductor lasers

A simple method for measuring the linewidth enhancement factor (LEF) of semiconductor lasers (SLs) is proposed and demonstrated in this paper. This method is based on the self-mixing effect when a small portion of optical signal intensity emitted by the SL reflected by the moving target re-enters the SL cavity, leading to a modulation in the SL’s output power intensity, in which the modulated envelope shape depends on the optical feedback strength as well as the LEF. By investigating the relationship between the light phase and power from the well-known Lang and Kobayashi equations, it was found that the LEF can be simply measured from the power value overlapped by two SLs’ output power under two different optical feedback strengths. Our proposed method is verified by both simulations and experiments.