SNR improvement of 8.2 dB in a self-mixing laser diode interferometer by using the difference signal at the output mirrors [Invited]

At the mirrors of a laser diode self-mixing interferometer, the output beams carry anti-correlated (i.e., in phase opposition) interferometric signals, whereas the superposed noise fluctuations are (partially) correlated. Therefore, by using an instrumental output of the interferometer as the difference of the two, we double the amplitude of the self-mixing useful signal, while the superposed noise is reduced. To validate the idea, we first calculate the noise reduction by means of a second quantization model, finding that in a laser diode the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be improved by 8.2 dB, typically. Then, we also carry out an experimental measurement of SNR and find very good agreement with the theoretical result.