Partition fluctuations in nearly single-longitudinal-mode lasers

A simple model of mode partition noise is developed, which is valid for semiconductor lasers operating CW, having a single active region and oscillating primarily in one dominant mode. It is shown that the intensity fluctuations in the nonlasing modes occur with characteristic times of a few nanoseconds and have exponential probability distributions. We show that the lasing mode is able to follow adiabatically fluctuations in the nonlasing modes in such a way that the total intensity remains constant. Our model quantitatively accounts for the observations of Linke et al. that the frequency of "dropouts" in the lasing-mode intensity decreases exponentially with the ratio of average intensities of the lasing and nonlasing modes, and that in digital communication applications a ratio of about 50 is required to reduce the resulting bit-error probability to \lsim 10^{-9} . We also account for the probability distribution of the lasing-mode intensity, which was observed by Liu et al to be exponential at low intensity and Gaussian at high intensity. The exponential fluctuations constitute partition noise induced in the lasing mode by large Gaussian fluctuations in the field amplitude of the nonlasing mode. Additional noise sources associated with the carrier density and the lasing-mode field produce Gaussian behavior at high intensities plus a negligible broadening of the low-intensity exponential tail.