Eduarda Pedruzzi da Silva

Generation of a multi-wavelength Brillouin

erbium fiber laser with low threshold in multiple
frequency spacing configurations

Vitória - ES
2022
 Eduarda Pedruzzi da Silva

Generation of a multi-wavelength Brillouin erbium fiber

laser with low threshold in multiple frequency spacing
configurations

Dissertation submitted to the Postgraduate

Program in Electrical Engineering from the
Technological Center of the Federal University
of Espirito Santo, as a partial requirement
for obtaining a Master’s Degree in Electrical
Engineering focused on Telecommunication.

Federal University of Espirito Santo

Technological Center
Postgraduate Program in Electrical Engineering

Supervisor: Dr. Carlos Eduardo Schmidt Castellani

Co-supervisor: Dr. Arnaldo Gomes Leal-Junior

Vitória - ES
2022
 Eduarda Pedruzzi da Silva

Generation of a multi-wavelength Brillouin erbium fiber

laser with low threshold in multiple frequency spacing
configurations

Dissertation submitted to the Postgraduate

Program in Electrical Engineering from the
Technological Center of the Federal University
of Espirito Santo, as a partial requirement
for obtaining a Master’s Degree in Electrical
Engineering focused on Telecommunication.

Dissertation approved. Vitória - ES, XX Xth , 2022:

Dr. Carlos Eduardo Schmidt Castellani

Supervisor
PPGEE/UFES

Dr. Arnaldo Gomes Leal-Junior

Co-supervisor
PPGEE/UFES

xxxx
Membro da Banca Avaliadora

Vitória - ES
2022
To the memory of my Grandmother.
 Contents

1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.1 Optical Fibers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.1.1 Attenuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.1.2 Disperssion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.1.3 Solitons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2 Fiber Lasers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.2.1 Brillouin Fiber Laser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.3 Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.4 Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.5 Dissertation Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

2 STIMULATED BRILLOUIN SCATTERING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.1 Brillouin Gain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.2 Electrostriction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.3 Brillouin Laser Amplification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4 Multi-wavelength Brillouin Fiber Lasers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3 ALL FIBER BRILLOUIN LASER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

3.1 Experimental Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2 Results and Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

4 MWBFL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.1 Experimental setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.2 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.2.1 Single frequency spacing Brillouin erbium fiber laser . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

5 CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
 7

1 Introduction

The laser is among the most important inventions of the twentieth century. Since
their development by Theodore Maiman in 1960, laser has made possible a countless
number of scientific, medical, industrial, and commercial applications. The word Laser is
an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. They represent
a class of light sources in the visible, near-ultraviolet or near/middle infrared spectral
range, which increase or amplify light signals after those signals have been generated by
other means. These processes include stimulated emission, where a photon interacts with
an excited molecule or atom and causes the emission of a second photon or phonon having
the same frequency, phase, polarization and direction, and optical feedback, present in
most lasers, that is usually provided by mirrors to feed the light back into the amplifier
for the continued growth of the developing beam. At present, a variety of laser sources
is available, for example gas lasers, dye lasers, solid-state lasers:are usually divided into
two categories, they can be either bulk or fiber-based lasers, and semiconductor lasers,
covering a wide spectral range. All the work described in this dissertation is focused just
on fiber lasers.
In a fiber laser the active medium is the core of the fiber, which can be doped or
not. Most commonly, this fiber is of a single-mode type and is made of silica. The pump
beam is launched longitudinally along the fiber length and may be guided either by the
core itself as occurs for the laser mode, for conventional single-mode fiber laser, or by an
inner cladding around this core, double-clad fiber-laser.
Interest in fiber lasers has been driven by the phenomenal growth in fiber-optic
communications, which itself resulted from the fundamental breakthrough in producing
silica optical fibers with extremely low light transmission losses. one clear argument for
the development of fiber laser technology has been its ready compatibility with optical
fiber systems. This has been borne out by the successful integration of erbium-doped fiber
amplifier (EDFA) technology into long-distance communications systems only a few years
after initial laboratory demonstrations.
A second indisputable advantage that fiber offers over a conventional laser medium
is the decoupling of the relationship between the length of the gain medium and the
pump bean focusing. the confinement of the light rays within the fiber core ensures that
pump intensity is maintained along with the fiber indefinitely, subject to losses through
absorption or scattering. In a conventional crystal laser, on the other hand, high power
density is achieved by tight focusing, which then limits the effective pumping length
through divergence. the small core diameter of single-mode fibers also ensures that the
8 Chapter 1. Introduction

power density is very high. these factors enable successful lasing of transitions that have no
conventional solid-state analog, via pumping of very weak absorption using a long length
of fibers.

1.1 Optical Fibers

An optical fiber is in its basic form simply a cylindrical glass core of refractive index
n1 surrounded by a cylindrical cladding made of a glass material that has a refractive index
n2 lower then n1. Typical fibers, such as step-index standard telecom fibers (STF), have
both core and cladding constituted of silica glass (SiO2). The difference in the refractive
index is usually achieved by doping the core with elements such as germanium dioxide
(GeO2) and phosphorus pentoxide (P2O5) that increase n1, while the cladding is doped
materials such as boron and fluorine that cause the inverse effect [8].
As a first approach, the physical phenomenon behind light guidance in standard
optical fibers can be understood by geometric optics by means of total internal reflection
[1]. If a ray of light is incident at a interface between two transparent media at an angle
higher then a certain critical angle, than no light is transmitted and everything is reflected.
This geometric approach generally serves as a good insight on light propagation in optical
fibers. However, if the core diameter and the wavelength in case have close values a field
analysis solving Maxwell’s equations is necessary for a more accurate understanding [1].
Another important concept regarding light propagation in optical fibers is the
number of modes that are allowed to propagate. If one solves Maxwell’s equations applying
the boundary conditions posed by the fibers [1], one will find that the possible solutions
define that only certain particular transverse electromagnetic field patterns are permitted.
A fiber that guides just the fundamental mode is called single-mode fiber (SMF), while if it
supports also other high-order modes then the fibre is called multi-mode fiber (MMF). The
parameter that determines the number of guided modes propagating in a fiber for each
given wavelength is the so-called V parameter. For a fiber to be single mode it is necessary
to fabricate it with a V value lower then 2.405. However, it is important to notice that the
number of modes in a fiber is wavelength dependent, and for a given fiber, the wavelength
at which high-order modes cease to propagate is called the cut-off wavelength.
The core size is the main structural difference between multi-mode and single-mode
fibers. Usual core size values are on the range of 1-5 µm for SMFs and 25-100 µm for
MMFs. In long distance telecommunication systems, single-mode fibers are preferably used
because on a multi-mode fiber each different mode travels with a different group velocity
causing dispersion and therefore signal distortion at high-repetition rates. Their reduced
core sizes also make SMFs ideal hosts for the generation of nonlinear effects even when
using moderate optical powers. MMFs are mainly used for short-distance optical fiber
1.1. Optical Fibers 9

communications where the effects of dispersion are not very significant.

1.1.1 Attenuation
As mention previously, one of the main traits of optical fibers that made them so
widely used is their capacity of guiding light with very low loss. In STFs, the attenuation at
its lowest point around the wavelength of 1550 nm, can be below 0.2 dB/km, which means
that light would have to travel 50 km until it reaches 10 of its initial value. The physical
mechanisms behind losses in optical fibres are chiefly ultraviolet (UV) absorption and
Rayleigh scattering at short wavelengths and molecular vibration at longer wavelengths [9].
In the wavelength region from 0.5 to 2 µm the loss in silicate fibers is limited mainly due
to Rayleigh scattering and to a lower degree also by material absorptions. The Rayleigh
scattering arises from local microscopic fluctuations in density, which causes local random
fluctuations in the refractive index. Typical r values at 1.55 µm are on the range of 0.12-0.15
dB/km [8]. Low Rayleigh scattering losses can be obtained by taking special care about
temperature and speed of pull during the drawing process of the fibre. The loss due to
material absorption in the range from 0.5 to 2 µm is mainly due to impurities in the fibre.
The intrinsic absorption loss of the silica glass is not very significant in the 0.5 to 2 µm
range. It is indeed less than 0.1 dB/km in the wavelength range from 0.8 to 1.6 µm [1].
This value gets higher only for wavelengths lower than 0.4 µm where electronic resonances
cause high ultra-violet absorption [13], and for wavelengths beyond 2 µm where vibrational
resonances become significant. To extend the operation of optical fibers beyond the silica
transparency window limit in the region of 2 µm, alternative materials have to be used,
such as fluoride [14], germanium dioxide [15], or chalcogenide glasses [16].
Another loss mechanism in optical fibers are the so-called waveguide losses, that
arise from perturbations on the waveguide structure that appear during the fabrication
process. Particularly significant can be the presence of imperfections on the core-cladding
interface, which can cause light to leak into the cladding. Usually, during the fabrication
process of an optical fiber a lot of care is taken in order to ensure that the core radius does
not vary significantly along the fiber length, which allows such losses to be kept typically
below 0.03 dB/km.

1.1.2 Disperssion
In optical fibers, dispersion is always related to the dependence of the phase velocity
of light to other parameters. In multi-mode fibers it arises mainly from the fact that light
guided at different modes present different velocities (inter modal dispersion), which is
completely suppressed in single mode-fibers, in which dispersion appears chiefly due to the
fact that light at different wavelengths travel at different speeds. Its immediate effect is
to cause broadening of short-pulses, which can be very detrimental in telecommunication
10 Chapter 1. Introduction

systems. In nonlinear and ultra-fast optics, dispersion has to be taken into account
because it plays a very important role in a number of different phenomena, such as soliton
propagation [17], mode-locking [18] and parametric processes [19].
The dispersion in single-mode fibers, known as group velocity dispersion (GVD)
arises from both material and wave-guide contributions. Material dispersion comes from
the fact that in a glass, the refractive index is wavelength dependent, and the waveguide
dispersion is due to the fact that part of the light might be guided in the cladding, which
has a different refractive index. The waveguide contribution to dispersion is also wavelength
dependent because the mode field diameter of a propagating beam, therefore the amount
of light which propagates in the cladding, is strongly dependent on wavelength

1.1.3 Solitons
Dissipate solitons are localized formations of an electromagnetic field that are
maintained through an energy exchange balance between gain and loss under the presence
of non-linearities, dispersion and spectral filtering [????, ????]. In fiber lasers, this type
of solitons are know to be highly chirped long pulses, with pulse duration that usually
range from a few picoseconds to a few tens of nanoseconds. It has been experimentally
demonstrated that mode-locked lasers can support such pulsed solutions under the presence
of net-normal dispersion [?????], and since then a lot of attention has been dedicated to
these topics [????]. The pulse shaping mechanism in such mode-locked systems can be
understood as follows. Noise fluctuations are triggered by the saturable absorber, which
over the successive round trips inserting more loss to the edges of the pulse-like structure
gives rise to a proper pulse, as in any mode-locked laser. The difference here is how the
pulses maintain themselves when propagating inside the cavity, since there is no interplay
between the self-phase modulation and anomalous dispersion shaping the pulse as a soliton.
In dissipative solitons the self-phase modulation generates new frequencies on the edge of
the pulses, which act together with the normal dispersion that makes the frequencies at the
front edge to travel faster than the frequencies at the trailing edge, making them temporally
even more apart, broadening the pulse in duration and giving it a chirp. However, the
spectral filtering present in the cavity, when it cuts the edges of the spectrum, is in reality
also cutting the temporal edges of the pulse because that is the part of the pulse in which
the lower and the higher frequencies remain. A similar situation happens in the saturable
absorber. When the edges of the pulse receive more loss, this also means that the edges of
the spectrum are " more loss, cutting the pulse spectrally.
For a number of reasons this operation regime has been studied and used as an
alternative pulsed source to the traditional solitons found in anomalous dispersionsystems.
One of the main factors that contribute to the recent interest in dissipative solitons is the
long pulse durations that allows this regime [??????] allow significant scaling of the pulse
1.2. Fiber Lasers 11

energies achievable [?????] overcoming the limits on pulse energy imposed by the soliton
regime. Moreover, their chirped nature makes them compressible simply by propagating
them through anomalous dispersion media, allowing high peak powers to be achieved.
Mathematically, dissipative solitons can be described by the complex cubic-quintic
Ginzburg-Landau equation (CGLE), which is an extension of the nonlinear Schrodinger
equation to higher-order and dissipative terms [?????]. Although typical dissipative solitons
have a square-shaped spectrum [?????] and temporally are represented by linearly chirped
long pulses, there is a huge variety of possible pulse shapes and spectral profiles that can
become a stable pulsed solution from the CGLE [?????]. Moreover, dissipative solitons are
know to be more sensitive to perturbations and break-down as their energy is scaled than
traditional solitons. These traits are particularly interesting for the of Brillouin lasers, in
which their typically very long lengths and high levels of noise makes it difficult to achieve
a steady state without power fluctuations to suit solitonic mode-locking in anomalous
dispersion fibers.

1.2 Fiber Lasers

The properties of fibers as active media for lasers explains why fiber lasers have
become one of the most popular choices for both academia and industry. This is particu-
larly due to their excellent beam quality provided by the waveguide, robustness against
mechanical vibrations, high average powers achievable, compact structures and low levels
of intracavity losses[1]. All these characteristics are required by many industrial [2], security
systems [3] and scientific applications [4]. Most types of fiber lasers are produced either
from rare earth doped fibers [5], fiber Bragg gratings [6], parametric amplification [7], and
also nonlinear effects such as nonlinear polarization rotation effect [8], four-wave mixing
[9], and stimulated Raman and Brillouin Scattering [10-11].
In non-linear effects such as SPM, XPM and FWM there is no energy exchange
between the electromagnetic field and the dielectric medium where it is propagating.
Nonetheless, there is a class of non-linear phenomena known as inelastic effects in which the
dielectric medium plays an active role such as in stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) [????]
and in stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) [????]. Both phenomena can be understood
on a quantum-mechanical level as the annihilation of a photon from a pump field and the
generation of a Stokes photon at a lower frequency (or higher wavelength) and a phonon.
The main difference between them is that SRS is associated with optical phonons, whereas
acoustic phonons participate in SBS.
Although in the quantum-mechanical picture the difference between them seems to
be subtle, it leads to very dissimilar behaviour. For example, in silica fibers the frequency
shift between pump and Stokes beams associated with SBS is usually around 11 GHz,
12 Chapter 1. Introduction

whereas in SRS this value is 13.2 THz, . This difference in frequency shifts between both
effects is due to the fact that SBS originates from light interaction with propagating
acoustic waves, whereas SRS originates from light interaction with resonant modes of
a molecular system, having the frequency shift determined by these discrete molecular
resonances.
The long frequency shift allowed by SRS allied with the high non-linearitiesand
long interaction lengths that can be found in optical fibers, makes Raman scattering a very
efficient and simple tool for wavelength conversion, being already widely used in optical
broadband amplification systems and tunable lasers [??????].Since all the experimental
work presented in this thesis is about Brillouin lasers,the present section is dedicated only
to SBS, deepening the understand about the physics involved in the Brillouin gain process
and its usage in cascaded fiber lasers.

1.2.1 Brillouin Fiber Laser

The Brillouin fiber laser was first reported in 1976 [8] and have remained an active
topic of study since then due to important features, such as a narrow linewidth, low
threshold power when compared to other types of amplifiers, and simple experimental
configurations. Brillouin lasers and amplifiers can be found in many different applications,
for example, including random fiber laser [12], Brillouin fiber-optic sensors [13], pulsed
lasers [14], high-power lasers [15], and multi-wavelength laser [16].
The nonlinear effect called Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) is the result of the
interaction between an incident pump light and the phonons in a medium of gain, as the
optical fiber. This interaction gives rise to backward propagating frequency-shifted light,
with a specific shift [17]. The Brillouin-shift is about to 0.1 nm at silica fiber. Brillouin
fiber lasers are particularly interesting due to simple, low-cost setup, excellent conversion
efficiency, fixed wavelength spacing, linewidth narrowing, and low threshold power [18].
Because of this, has become a research hot spot in recent years owing to their promising
use in a variety of fields, such as distributed fiber sensor [19-20], Dense wavelength division
multiplexing (DWDM) and coherent optical communications [20-21] and multiwavelength
Brillouin fiber lasers (MWBFL) [22-23]. This characteristic has been successfully employed
in the generation of MWBFL because when we change the SWBFL’s setup to dual-ring
cavity setup and begin to generate the n - order Stokes lines signals, these are equally
spaced at the Brillouin - shift. Therefore, multiwavelength lines are generated in the
same communication band, that provides the use on the diverse applications. But the
stability in a time of wavelength and linewidth in SWBFL are difficult to control because
of depending on characteristics pumped laser, gain medium, room temperature, and
experimental configurations. And the line number in MWBFL and the flatness of output
spectra is was hard due to the same problems as aforementioned, also because of the
1.3. Objectives 13

necessity to high amplification to overcome the cavity loss and more produced setup.
However, due to limited gain achieved by these nonlinear phenomena, the capacity
and the efficiency of the produced laser were relatively low. A linear gain of erbium-doped
fiber (EDF) were integrated with nonlinear Brillouin gain in the same laser cavity to
enhance the laser performance. The new hybrid laser cavity is denoted by multi-wavelength
Brillouin–Erbium fiber laser (MBEFL) [24-26]. In spite of the new hybrid laser cavity have
an advantage in terms of capacity, efficiency, low threshold power and high induced gain,
other limitations are considered such as laser tunability and very narrow channel spacing
wavelength of 11 GHz (0.1 nm) that limits these lasers to be used in reality in optical
communication systems [27]. Laser tunability issue were enhanced by many researchers
using various techniques [28-30]. On the other side, more effort has been reported by many
researchers to enlarge the laser line wavelength spacing.

1.3 Objectives
This dissertation proposes and experimentally demonstrate a generation of a multi-
wavelength Brillouin-Erbium fibrer laser in multiple frequency spacing configurations. By
employing a laser source of narrow linewidth (1kHz), 25 km of a non-zero dispersion-shifted
fiber (NZDSF) as the Brillouin gain medium, and a compact all-fiber setup with low loss,
single, double, and triple frequency spacing configurations are obtained with BP as low as
1 mW.
The specific objectives of this work are listed as follow:

1. To develop and evaluate experimental configurations and select for testing setups.

2. To develop and to apply a setup for a Brillouin amplification

3. To develop a Brillouin laser with different types of fibers

4. To test different pump powers for characterization of non-linear effect Brillouin in

different setups

5. To develop a multiples wavelength Brillouin fiber laser and test different setups.

1.4 Contributions
The publications resulting from this dissertassion are listed bellow:

1. Pedruzzi, E., Silva, L. C., Leal-Junior, A. G., Castellani, C. E. (2022). Generation

of a multi-wavelength Brillouin erbium fiber laser with low threshold in multiple
frequency spacing configurations. Optical Fiber Technology, 69, 102832.
14 Chapter 1. Introduction

2. da Silva, E. P., Pereira, K., Martins, G. R., Junior, V. N., dos Reis, L. B., Castellani,
C. E. S. (2019, November). Low Threshold and Highly Efficient All Fiber Brillouin
Laser. In 2019 SBMO/IEEE MTT-S International Microwave and Optoelectronics
Conference (IMOC) (pp. 1-3). IEEE.

3. Silva, L. C., Silva, E. P., Audibert, F. R., Castellani, C. E. (2020). Simulation

solution for single and cascaded multi-wavelength Brillouin fiber lasers based on an
analytical model. Optical Fiber Technology, 59, 102317.

4. Rebuli, G. S., Silva, L. C., Pedruzzi, E., Leal-Junior, A. G., Segatto, M. E.,
Castellani, C. E. Spectral Optimization of Stokes Channels for Multi-Wavelength
Brillouin Fiber Lasers. Under review.

1.5 Dissertation Structure

This dissertation is organized as follows: the history of optical fiber and optical
fiber lasers is presented on chapter one. In addition, in chapter two, we introduce the
Stimulated Brillouin Scattering effect and your peculiarities being a non-linear effect. The
development of a Brillouin laser and testing of the three setups with multiples frequency
spacing are presenting in chapter three and four, respectively, we offer the results for each
of them. At the end, we present the conclusions gained from the work, as well as future
work for improvements and continuation of the study.
 15

2 Stimulated Brillouin Scattering

In 1920, Leon Brillouin discovered a new kind of light scattering – Brillouin

scattering – which occurs as a result of the interaction of light with a transparent material’s
temporal periodic variations in density and refractive index. Many advances have since
been made in the study of Brillouin scattering, in particular in the field of fiber optics.
The physics behind Brillouin scattering can be understood as an inelastic effect in which
part of the incident beam energy is absorbed and maintained in the medium in the form
of molecular vibrations, causing the light to be scattered back with less energy (or in a
lower frequency) than previously.
When light that is propagating in a dielectric medium is absorbed, it can excite the
molecules that are in a stable ground vibrational state E0 to a higher unstable (sometimes
called virtual) vibrational state Ev, where the difference Ev - E0 equals the energy of the
incident photon Ep. In a normal situation, since this new state is unstable, after a few
femtoseconds the medium re-emits a photon with same energy Ep and the molecule comes
back to its original energy state E0, in an elastic scattering process know as Rayleigh
scattering. However, it can happen that after re-emitting back the absorbed photon the
molecule instead of coming back to the ground state E0 it stays in a higher but still stable
vibrational state level E1. In this case the re-emitted photon is going to have an energy Es
that equals to Ev - E1, therefore being less energetic than the original absorbed photon
Ep. From the Planck relation E = h.! that defines the relation between the photon energy
(E) and the frequency (!) of its associated electromagnetic wave, where h is the Plank’s
constant, it can be seen that the new generated photon for this later case is going to be
scattered in a lower frequency, or in a higher wavelength. This mechanism is called Stokes
Brillouin scattering, or simply Brillouin scattering.
Figura
Although much less likely, a different situation, called anti-stokes Brillouin scattering
can also occur. If a molecule that is already at the energy level E1 absorbs a photon and
re-emits it coming back to the ground level E0, then the re-emitted photon is going to
have more energy then the original photon that was absorbed. In this case the energy of
the new photon equals Ev + E1, therefore shifting the original frequency by the same
amount as the Stokes case, however now to a higher frequency, or to lower wavelength.
Additionally, the existence of a previous signal at the Stokes frequency is together with
a beam at the pump frequency can stimulate the Brillouin scattering process providing
optical amplification. When the pump wave, and therefore also the scattered wave, have
sufficient intensity they can both interact causing a non-linear enhancement of the medium
16 Chapter 2. Stimulated Brillouin Scattering

excitation, which on its turn enhances the scattering. This positive feedback which is
achieved above a critical incident intensity causes the scattered light to be exponentially
amplified, characterizing the stimulated scattering regime. Although for a given material,
the shift in frequency is always the same, by changing the pump wavelength one can
properly set the Stokes wavelength, allowing the generation of tunable optical amplifiers.
This capacity of Brillouin amplifiers of extending the wavelength range in which one
can obtain gain in optical fibers is very attractive to fiber lasers, in which the extensive
use of rare-earth-doped fiber amplifiers restrain the usage of such lasers just to specific
wavelength bands.
In the SBS geometry, a laser beam is focused into a cell containing the non-linear
material. The electric field associative with the imput laser beam drives the creation of an
a acoustic phase grating near the focal point in the medium. The imput laser beam the
backscatters from this grating. A threshold power exists where the gain of the non-linear
backscattering process increase exponentially. This threshold power is dependent on the
properties of the imput laser beam and on the properties of the non-linear material being
used.

2.1 Brillouin Gain

Despite an early report in 1940 of a Brillouin oscillator built using a liquid-core
optical fiber waveguide structure [???], the first report of a Brillouin laser using a fiber
waveguide made fully of glass came just two years later [???]. Since then the field increased
immensely and Brillouin lasers became an established reality used directly to efficiently
achieve high-power at a number of wavelengths [????] or used as a pump for other sources of
wavelength conversion [109]. The Brillouin gain profile of optical fibers made of silica glass
can be seen in figura. Its peak occurs at a frequency shift of around 11 GHz, which allows
the generation of broadband amplifiers [???] and widely tunable lasers [???]. For a pump at
1 µm co-polarized with the signal the peak of the Brilouin gain (gr) is approximately 1013
m/W. For un-polarized beams gr is divided by a factor of 2, and for orthogonally polarized
beams the Brillouin gain nearly vanishes. Its value also scales inversely with the pump
wavelength. Although the Brillouin gain in silica glass is not as high as the gain found in
others optical amplifiers, doping the fiber with different materials or using different types
of glass can dramatically change the intensity and the profile of the Brillouin gain,allowing
the generation of strong amplification in just a few tens of meters of fiber.
SBS is initiated by spontaneous Brillouin scattering of light from the background
phonon field of the medium created by thermal noise fluctuations. This phonon field
consists of a periodic pressure variation, and this refractive index variation in the medium.
The applied incident laser pump then interferences with the Stokes Scattered light to
2.2. Electrostriction 17

increase the amplitude of the phonon field. This in turn exponentially increases the gain
of the stimulated scattering process in the backward direction.
Before the backscattered fiel can be generated, the driving force from wich SBS can
take place is called Electrostriction, that compresses an optical material in the presence of
an electric field.
Spontaneous Brillouin scattering results from the scattering of the incident radiation
off the sound waves that are presente in the thermal equilibrium. For a high power incident
laser pump, the spontaneously scattered light can become very intense. The incident and
scattered optical fields interefere to give the density and pressure variation by means
of electrostriction.The incident laser pump can then scatter from this refractive index
variation. The scattered light will experience a small Doppler frequency shift due to the
created the phonon field over the effective coherence length of the interaction. In this
way, the incident laser pump and the backscattered Stokes return continue interfering to
reinforce the growth of the phonon field in the medium.

2.2 Electrostriction
sera de falar um capitulo só disso??

2.3 Brillouin Laser Amplification

The properties of fibers as active media for lasers explains why fiber lasers have
become one of the most popular choices for both academia and industry. This is particu-
larly due to their excellent beam quality provided by the waveguide, robustness against
mechanical vibrations and high average powers achievable (??). All these characteristics
are required by many industrial (??), security systems (??) and scientific applications (??).
Most types of fiber lasers are produced either from rare earth doped fibers (??), or by
nonlinear effects, such as, stimulated Raman and Brillouin scattering (??) and parametric
amplification (??).
The Brillouin fiber ring cavity laser was first reported in 1976 (??) and have
remained an active topic of study since then due to important features, such as a narrow
linewidth, low threshold power when compared to other types of amplifiers, and simple
experimental configurations. Brillouin lasers and amplifiers can be found in many different
applications, for example, including random fiber laser (??), Brillouin fiber-optic sensors
(??), pulsed lasers (??), high-power lasers (??), and frequency comb-generation (??).
The process of Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) can be described classically as
a nonlinear interaction among the pump and Stokes fields and an acoustic wave (??). Since
SBS is a nonlinear effect, most of the Brillouin lasers and amplifiers found in literature have
18 Chapter 2. Stimulated Brillouin Scattering

threshold values at least of a few tens of mW, because it needs a certain amount of power
in order to generate it. For instance, for a pulsed wavelength-tunable Brillouin fiber laser,
was found a threshold power of 7.95 mW at wavelength of 1530 nm with fiber at 18.5km
(??), and for SBS generated in a small-core photonic crystal fiber at the wavelength of 532
and 1550 nm it was found a threshold power of 69 and 1160 mW respectively for a fiber
with 10 m (??). Additionally, a linearly polarized Brillouin random fiber laser (LP-BRFL)
with a threshold of 43.8mW at the wavelength of 1550.193nm was demonstrated for a fiber
with 2km (??).

2.4 Multi-wavelength Brillouin Fiber Lasers

The development of multi-wavelength laser sources has grown exponentially in
recent years. Part of this rapid progress has taken place due to their potential applications
such as in coherent light source for wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) schemes
(??????). These laser source technologies also have other applications, such as in fiber
sensors (??), gas spectroscopy (??), phased array antennas (??), and microwave generation
(??). Among other features, multi-wavelength fiber laser sources are largely exploited
mostly due to their high long-term stability (??), large signal-to-noise ratios (??), and
flexible wavelength tuning abilities (????).
Such laser sources can be fully made in all-fiber configurations allowing not only
mechanically robust and compact structures, but also low levels of intracavity losses. Some
examples of multi-wavelength fiber laser architectures can be constructed by using nonlinear
optical loop mirrors (??), fiber Bragg gratings (??), Mach-Zehnder interferometers (??),
Fabry–Perot filters (??), Sagnac fiber loop filters (??), Lyot filters (??), and also nonlinear
effects such as nonlinear polarization rotation effect (??), four-wave mixing (??), and
stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) (??).
SBS is a nonlinear effect in single-mode fibers (SMFs), which can be described as
the result of an interaction between an intense pump light and acoustic waves in a nonlinear
medium with a constant Brillouin shift frequency (??). The frequency downshifting of
the Stokes light is caused by a Doppler frequency shift that is introduced when the
Brillouin pump is backscattered by a moving acoustic wave. Its speed in the fiber core
determines the amount of the Stokes frequency shift. Generally, the Brillouin frequency
shift is approximately 10 GHz in silica fiber (??). This frequency downshifting feature
of the Stokes light makes the SBS effective for multi-wavelength fiber lasers. However,
the capacity and the efficiency of the produced laser are relatively low due to the limited
gain achieved by only this nonlinear phenomenon in most silica optical fibers. Therefore,
to improve the laser performance, a linear gain is often integrated with the nonlinear
Brillouin gain in the same fiber architecture, mostly through optical fibers doped with
2.4. Multi-wavelength Brillouin Fiber Lasers 19

active rare-earth ions as a gain medium, such as erbium (Er3+ ). This hybrid laser cavity
is denoted by multi-wavelength Brillouin erbium fiber laser (MBEFL) (??), and it has
advantages such as high efficiency, high induced gain, and narrow linewidth characteristics
(??????).
Specifically, multi-wavelength Brillouin fiber lasers (MBFLs) have attracted much
attention due to their promising features, such as good stability at room temperature
(??), tunable narrow-linewidth frequency scheme (????), low-intensity noise (??), and a
broad tunable range (??). On the other hand, a current bottleneck of MBFLs is its narrow
frequency shift that becomes a challenge for the de-multiplexing and signals filtering
process for optical communication operations (????). In this perspective, several different
schemes have been developed to further expand the MBFLs frequency spacing up to 20
GHz range, such as figure-of-eight configuration (??), micro-air gap cavity (??), and four-
port circulator (??). Other approaches that support this development are by employing
two metal-coated fiber planar mirrors and a Sagnac reflector (??), as well as toggling an
optical switch (??).
Recently, some others investigations have been developed to improve the per-
formance of MBFLs. For instance, Zhang et. al (??) demonstrated a multi-wavelength
generation at 1.3 µm waveband in a random fiber laser for the first time. By adopting
a tunable amplified spontaneous emission source as the pump, and a Sagnac fiber loop
filter to provide multi-wavelength feedback, flexible wavelength, and channel spacing
tunability have been demonstrated and a laser output power as high as 4.67 W was
obtained. In terms of Brillouin frequency shift, several investigations have been carried out.
In (??), a multi-wavelength Brillouin generation in a bismuth-doped fiber laser with single
and double-frequency spacing was demonstrated by Ahmad et. al by using a dispersion
compensating fiber as the Brillouin gain medium. At the maximum pump power of 1021
mW and with the BP set at 11 dBm, up to 7 Brillouin Stokes lines with a wavelength
spacing of 0.074 nm were obtained in the single-spaced configuration. In the case of the
double-spaced configuration, 14 Stokes lines were generated with a wavelength spacing of
0.15 nm between the even Stokes lines (??).
A wide flat triple Brillouin frequency spacing multi-wavelength fiber laser assisted
by four-wave mixing was demonstrated by Al-Alimi et. al with a channel spacing of
0.246 nm (??). Furthermore, Al-Mashhadani et. al also demonstrated an MBFL with
quadruple Brillouin-shift wavelength spacing (0.33 nm, 40 GHz). In this setup, a high
BP power configuration, using a pre-amplification technique, and capturing the residual
pump power using a wave selective coupler were employed to enhance the laser comb
tunability, achieving four Brillouin Stokes lines (??). The same authors in a different work
also demonstrated the generation of a widely tunable MBFL with quintuple Brillouin
frequency spacing (0.4 nm, 50 GHz) (??), where three dispersion compensating fiber spools
20 Chapter 2. Stimulated Brillouin Scattering

with a total length of 15 km as a Brillouin gain medium were employed, along with two
sections of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) with a maximum pump power of 220
mW. A wide tuning range of 40 nm (1540–1580 nm) in the absence of free-running modes
was achieved.
 21

3 All fiber Brillouin Laser

In this chapter, we demonstrated the construction of a all fiber Brillouin laser

in ring cavity using a pumping laser with bandwidth of 1kHz and three different types
of optical fibers: A 25 km Non-Zero Dispersion-Shifted Fiber (NZDSF), A 2 km Highly
Non-linear Fiber (HNLF) and A 15 km Dispersion Compensating Fiber (DCF). The
combination of some of the caracteristics of those fibers with the very low bandwidth of
our pump source, we were able to find very low thresholds, maintaining a high efficiency,
even when using only 2km of a fiber gain media. Moreover, here we discuss some of the
laser characteristics, such as: efficiency, threshold, time and frequency stability, and Stokes
shift, for variations of pump power and cavity output coupling ratio.

3.1 Experimental Setup

IMOC

3.2 Results and Discussions

IMOC
 23

4 MWBFL

ARTIGO OFT

4.1 Experimental setup

4.2 Results and discussion

4.2.1 Single frequency spacing Brillouin erbium fiber laser
 25

5 Conclusions and future works

Conclusão geral
Conclusão imoc
conclusão OFT
Trabalhos Futuros
 27

Bibliography