0.16 nm spaced multi-wavelength Brillouin fiber laser in a figure-of-eight configuration

Abstract

A stable and compact multi-wavelength Brillouin fiber laser (BFL) operating at room temperature is experimentally demonstrated using a 100 m long photonic crystal fiber (PCF) in conjunction with a figure-of-eight configuration. At a Brillouin pump (BP) level of 15.3 dBm, 7 simultaneous lines with 20 GHz or 0.16 nm line spacing is achieved by removing the odd-order Stokes lines. The anti-Stokes lines are also generated via four wave mixing process in the laser cavity. Compared with the Erbium-based multi-wavelength laser, this BFL has advantages in term of channel spacing and flexibility in the choice of operating wavelength. The output spectrum of the proposed BFL can be tuned by 80 nm, dependent on the availability of an appropriate BP source. The multi-wavelength BFL shows a good stability with power fluctuations of less than 0.5 dB over more than 3 h.