Abstract
We review the fundamental properties of Brillouin scattering in a perfluorinated graded-index polymer optical fiber (PFGI-POF) with 120 μm core diameter. The experiments were performed at 1.55 μm telecommunication wavelength. The Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) and the Brillouin bandwidth were 2.83 GHz and 105 MHz, respectively. The Brillouin gain coefficient was calculated to be 3.09 × 10−11 m/W, which was comparable to that of fused silica fibers. The Brillouin threshold power of the 100 m POF was estimated to be as high as 24 W, which can be, for practical applications, reduced by using POFs with smaller cores. These properties were compared with those of silica-based graded-index multi-mode fibers. We also investigated the BFS dependences on strain and temperature. They showed negative dependences with coefficients of −121.8 MHz/% and −4.09 MHz/K, respectively, which are −0.2 and −3.5 times as large as those in silica fibers. These BFS dependences indicate that the Brillouin scattering in PFGI-POFs can be potentially applied to high-accuracy temperature sensing with reduced strain sensitivity.
Highlights
Compared to other standard glass fibers, polymer optical fibers (POFs) [1,2] are known to provide extremely easy and cost-effective connection; besides, they are flexible enough to endure over 40%strain [3]
The Brillouin signal generated in the 1 m single-mode optical fiber (SMF) between the circulator and the PFGI-POF is included in the Stokes light, but it has no influence on the Brillouin gain spectrum (BGS) measurement, because the Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) in the SMF is typically 11 GHz, about 4 times higher than that in the PFGI-POF
We made a review on the Brillouin scattering properties in the PFGI-POF at 1.55 m wavelength
Summary
Brillouin scattering in optical fibers [6,7], which is one of the most significant nonlinear processes, has been widely studied. It has been applied to a number of useful devices and systems, such as optical amplifiers [7], lasers [7,8], optical comb generators [8], microwave signal processors [9], slow light generators [10], phase conjugators [11], tunable delay lines [12], and strain/temperature sensors [13,14,15]. Brillouin scattering has been studied not merely for silica fibers but for some specialty fibers including tellurite glass fibers [16,17], As2Se3 chalcogenide fibers [18,19], bismuth-oxide highly-nonlinear fibers [20,21], and photonic crystal fibers [22,23]. Brillouin scattering in POFs has not yet been observed and reported, which will add a variety of advantages of POFs to the conventional application field of Brillouin scattering
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