mode_hopping.avi

Visualisation 1 shows an animation of the experimentally measured real time laser dynamics of a swept source external cavity laser. The complex electric field of the laser is measured using an interferometric phase detection technique. The upper plot of the animation displays the instantaneous optical spectrum over the course of 500 ns calculated from the windowed E-field. The lower plots show the corresponding measured Intensity and instantaneous frequency of the laser over the same period. The windowing limits are shown with red, dashed lines. During this time period, the laser operates in several dynamic regimes, including CW operation, mode-hopping dynamics, multi-mode transient oscillations, and chirped mode-pulling.