Self-mixing technique for vibration measurements in a laser diode with multiple modes created by optical feedback

We present experimental and theoretical results obtained from the study of the effects of optical feedback in low-cost Fabry-Perot laser diodes due to the presence of an external cavity created by an external reflective or diffusive vibrating target. Experimental results show that a change in the length of the external cavity produces the well-known amplitude modulation of the optical output power and, depending on the amount of optical feedback, a subperiodicity appears in the amplitude modulation of the output power. The experiments show that the subperiodicity appears independently of the length of the external cavity and is due to mode hopping between different longitudinal laser modes. Numerical analysis focused on the effects observed support that the mode hop occurs between modes whose round-trip phase delay along the external cavity is out of phase, thus producing a subperiodicity of the total amplitude modulation.