Measurements and analysis of antireflection coatings reflectivity related to external cavity lasers

Facets of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) designed for external cavity lasers must be coated with an antireflection (AR) film of high quality and extremely low reflectance. Therefore measurements of facet reflectance play a crucial role in the fabrication of such AR coating. The reflectance can be estimated by studying the optical power reflected from the Fabry–Perot cavity formed for that purpose by the examined SOA facet and the end of a single-mode fibre. We have made analysis of practical suitability of such measurement method. Theoretical calculations show that, for the low reflectance coatings, losses due to light coupling into optical fibre cannot be omitted in the analysis of the experimental results. To verify this conclusion a theoretical model was tested for a low reflectance surface and we have found that the relative error of the measurements supported by the theoretical model is on the order of 8%.