Fiber-Based Techniques to Suppress Stimulated Brillouin Scattering

Abstract

Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is the major factor that limits the maximum optical fiber output power in narrow linewidth applications, which include important fields such as passive optical networks (PONs), high-power fiber amplifiers, and lasers. Great efforts have been dedicated to suppressing the SBS effect and increasing the maximum optical fiber output power. This paper focuses on key fiber-based techniques to suppress SBS. These techniques take advantages of the properties of optical fibers. We present how these properties (electric modes, acoustic modes, and material properties) could be utilized to suppress SBS. The fiber-based techniques are divided into transverse optical fiber design, longitudinal variant fiber design, and external perturbations (strain and temperature) on optical fibers. Transverse optical fiber design focuses on the mechanism electro-acoustic interaction. Large effective area fiber design and acoustic tailoring techniques have been discussed. Longitudinal variant fiber design considers the nonlinear SBS interaction along propagation distance, and various techniques related have been presented. External perturbations (strain and temperature) on optical fibers emphasize on how external static perturbations could modify the SBS effect.

Keywords

• stimulated Brillouin scattering
• optical fiber
• passive optical networks
• high-power fiber lasers
• fiber amplifiers