Experimental study of speckle patterns generated by low-coherence semiconductor laser light

Abstract: Speckle is a wave interference phenomenon that has been studied in various fields, including optics, hydrodynamics and acoustics. Speckle patterns contain spectral information of the interfering waves, and of the scattering medium that generates the pattern. Here we study experimentally the speckle patterns generated by the light emitted by two types of semiconductor lasers: conventional laser diodes, where we induce low-coherence emission by optical feedback or by pump current modulation, and coupled nanolasers. In both cases we analyze the intensity statistics of the respective speckle patterns to inspect the degree of coherence of the light. We show that that speckle analysis provides a non-spectral way to assess the coherence of semiconductor laser light.