Multiwavelength ytterbium-Brillouin random Rayleigh feedback fiber laser

Abstract

In this letter, we experimentally demonstrate the multiwavelength ytterbium-Brillouin random fiber laser for the first time, in the half-open cavity formed by a fiber loop mirror and randomly distributed Rayleigh mirrors. With a cladding-pumped ytterbium-doped fiber and a long TrueWave fiber, the narrow linewidth Brillouin pump can generate multiple Brillouin Stokes lines with hybrid ytterbium-Brillouin gain. Up to six stable channels with a spacing of about 0.06 nm are obtained. This work extends the operation wavelength of the multiwavelength Brillouin random fiber laser to the 1 µm band, and has potential in various applications.

Truly remote fiber optic sensor networks

“…Many studies have been carried out to enhance the already promising inherent features of RDFB-FL, for instance, the optimization of the output power [104][105][106][107], relative intensity noise transfer [108,109]and thermal noise [110]. In addition, their spectral and statistical properties have been analyzed in [111][112][113] and a variety of configurations have been proposed implementing polarized pump or linearlypolarized outputs [114][115][116][117], mixing different fibers in the gain media [118], short cavities [119,120] and tunable [121], multi-wavelength [57,[122][123][124][125] or super-continuum output [126,127]. Finally, RDFB-FL schemes allow combining the traditionally employed Raman amplification with other amplification mechanisms such as Erbium.…”

“…Finally, RDFB-FL schemes allow combining the traditionally employed Raman amplification with other amplification mechanisms such as Erbium. In fact, recent works have proposed new schemes for random distributed feedback generation based on Erbium-doped fiber or implementing Brillouin random lasing, Ytterbium-Brillouin or Erbium-Brillouin [125,[128][129][130][131][132][133][134][135].…”

“…The distinctive properties of these lasers use to include high power and long cavities, which make them especially convenient for long-haul telecommunications or sensing applications [102,103,[136][137][138][139]. Besides, RDFB-FL present mode-less behavior, which is useful in multiwavelength and tunable laser sources [121][122][123][124][125] since the undesired mode competition or mode hoping are eliminated. Their ability to generate outstanding stable narrow-linewidth laser sources can be exploited in many sensing applications [140][141][142][143][144], being able to achieve high-resolution measurements [142].…”

Tunable multi-wavelength Brillouin–erbium random distributed feedback fiber laser

“…Brillouin scattering or Raman scattering [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] . Compared with random fiber lasers based on optical filters, multiwavelength random fiber lasers based on stimulated Brillouin scattering not only have the advantages of narrow band, low threshold, and high stability, but also have the unique spectral characteristics.…”

“…The random fiber laser output of the 5-order Stokes laser lines with a spacing of about 0.088 nm was successfully obtained in a linear half-open-cavity structure [17] . In 2018, Wu et al proposed a multi-wavelength Brillouin-ytterbium random fiber laser composed of fiber ring mirror and randomly distributed Rayleigh scattering to obtain a 6-order stable Brillouin-Stokes lines with a spacing of about 0.06 nm [24] . In 2020, Wang et al proposed and experimentally demonstrated a multiwavelength Brillouin-Erbium random fiber laser using highly nonlinear fiber, an 11-order Stokes lines with a wavelength spacing of 0.074 nm and a signal-to-noise ratio of 41.22 dB is obtained.…”