Frequency stabilized coherent Brillouin random fiber laser: theory and experiments

Abstract

A coherent random fiber laser based on stimulated Brillouin scattering as gain and Rayleigh scattering as distributed feedback mirror was constructed. Its frequency is stabilized by a high finesse narrow-band Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) to select lasing frequency within the gain bandwidth. The light confinement within single-mode fiber enhances largely the random lasing directionality, which enables a high-quality coherent random lasing in the weak scattering region by using a milliwatt continuous-wave pump source. The FPI in the laser configuration acts as a frequency selection on the Rayleigh feedback light, and thus the random lasing frequency was locked at one of its transmission peaks giving a relative frequency fluctuation of ~2.5 × 10(-11) at 100 s. The measured frequency jitter is within ~~ ± 20 kHz over 3 hours, 3 dB linewidth is ~50 Hz and frequency noise is ~20 mHz/Hz(1/2) at 10 kHz.