Relative intensity noise and frequency noise have been measured for the first time for a single-frequency Brillouin chalcogenide As38Se62 fiber laser. This is also the first demonstration of a compact suspended-core fiber Brillouin laser, which exhibits a low threshold power of 22 mW and a slope efficiency of 26% for nonresonant pumping.

A compact second-order Stokes Brillouin fiber laser made of microstructured chalcogenide fiber is reported for the first time. This laser required very low pump power for Stokes conversion: 6 mW for first order lasing and only 30 mW for second order lasing with nonresonant pumping. We also show linewidth-narrowing as well as intensity noise reduction for both the 1 st and 2 nd order Stokes component when compared to that of the pump source.

Up to 16 dB frequency noise reduction and a linewidth 8 times narrower that of the pump source is reported for the Stokes component in a compact Brillouin fiber laser made of chalcogenide microstructured fiber. Since the pump wave is not resonant in the ring cavity, an active stabilization of the laser is not primordial thus making the system simpler and cheaper. Although only a 3 metre-long microstructured chalcogenide fiber was used as gain medium, a very low laser threshold power of 6 mW was obtained for nonresonant pumping. The linewidthnarrowing effect achieved in our BFL cavity is also discussed.

International audienceIn this paper, an all-fiber Brillouin laser ring cavity using a 3-m-long suspended-core chalcogenide As38Se62 fiber is reported for the first time to our knowledge. For a nonresonant ring cavity with no servo-locking, a laser threshold power of 37 mW and an efficiency of 26 % were obtained for a fiber having a core diameter of 5 μm. The linewidth of the Brillouin fiber laser and the pump laser were respectively measured to be below 4 kHz, the resolution of our autocorrelator, and 250 kHz, thus showing the linewidth-narrowing nature of the Brillouin laser. This result paves the way to compact Brillouin lasers with low threshold power and good spectral purity. A full experimental Brillouin characterization is also reported. We measured a Brillouin gain spectrum of 14.2 MHz, a Brillouin gain coefficient of 5.6x10-9 m/W and a Brillouin frequency shift of 7.95 GHz in our fiber