Ultra-Wide Bandwidth Brillouin-Raman Random Fiber Laser With Augmented Synergistic Nonlinearity

Abstract

We propose a Brillouin-Raman random fiber laser with enhanced synergistic nonlinearity for ultra-wide bandwidth Brillouin comb generation. The augmented synergistic nonlinearity, including enhanced Rayleigh scattering (RS) effect, stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), is achieved in a hybrid fiber (a fiber combination of a 7.2-km dispersion compensation fiber and a 10-km single-mode fiber) under a strong Raman pumping condition. Under the strong Raman pumping condition, more Stokes lines are generated due to the enhanced RS-induced oscillations of Brillouin Stokes lines at short wavelength band, thus suppressing self-lasing cavity mode oscillations at long wavelength band. In the experiments, the multi-wavelength Brillouin comb with an ultra-wide bandwidth of 63.5 nm (1513 nm-1576.5 nm) with frequency spacing of double Brillouin frequency shift, which is the largest bandwidth from Brillouin fiber lasers, to the best of our knowledge, has been achieved. The proposed ultra-wide bandwidth Brillouin-Raman fiber laser has potential applications in optical communication, optical wavelength division multiplexing, and fiber sensing.