Abstract

Recently, there have been reports of observations¹ of correlated spontaneous emission² in laser systems (CELs). There may still be some confusion, however, in the interpretation of these results. In particular, the distinction between CEL operation and ordinary phase locking (PLL) has not been clarified. Experimentally, we exploit the phase sensitivity and time dependance of the phase diffusion to differentiate between the PLL and CEL cases in a Zeeman laser. The phase-locking equation can be approximated in a parametrized form:

© 1988 Optical Society of America