Broadband flat-amplitude multiwavelength Brillouin-Raman fiber laser with spectral reshaping by Rayleigh scattering

Abstract

In this letter, we propose a novel configuration for generating multiwavelength Brillouin-Raman fiber laser (MBRFL). The spectral reshaping effect introduced by Rayleigh scattering in a 50 km single mode fiber unifies the generated Brillouin comb in terms of both power level and linewidth. As a consequence, we are able to obtain a 40 nm flat-amplitude MBRFL with wide bandwidth from 1557 nm to 1597 nm covering >500 Stokes lines. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the widest flat-amplitude bandwidth of MBRFL with uniform Stokes combs using just a single Raman pump laser. The channel-spacing is 0.08 nm and the measured OSNR is higher than 12.5 dB. We also demonstrate that the output spectrum of the MBRFL is nearly unaffected over 14 dB range of Brillouin pumping power.