Spontaneous and stimulated Brillouin scattering gain spectra in optical fibers

Abstract

We study the Brillouin scattering behavior in several single-mode fibers with different waveguide characteristics in terms of their longitudinal mode structures in the gain spectrum, linewidth narrowing, and stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) threshold levels. Evolution from spontaneous to SBS is investigated by monitoring the Brillouin line-shape and the behavior of the longitudinal acoustooptic resonance modes that exist in the core. We compare our results with the current theory of Brillouin scattering generated from noise in the undepleted pump approximation. We also present experimentally Brillouin gain spectra in the highly depleted pump regime, where there is no analytical solution, by showing the evolution of the gain spectrum as a function of the injected laser intensity.