Abstract: | We present a theoretical analysis and an experimental study of the impacts of external optical feedback on dualfrequency fiber lasers. The external optical feedback can effectively suppress the phase noise of the beat notes of dual-frequency fiber lasers, provided some requirements are satisfied. The polarization of the optical feedback is important for the fiber laser's stability, and it can also tune the beat note frequency. A side effect of external optical feedback, as demonstrated in the experiments, is lowering the sensitivity of the dual-frequency fiber laserbased sensors, although such degradation is not obvious. |