Brillouin scattering-induced rogue waves in self-pulsing fiber lasers

Abstract

We report the experimental observation of extreme instabilities in a self-pulsing fiber laser under the influence of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). Specifically, we observe temporally localized structures with high intensities that can be referred to as rogue events through their statistical behaviour with highly-skewed intensity distributions. The emergence of these SBS-induced rogue waves is attributed to the interplay between laser operation and resonant Stokes orders. As this behaviour is not accounted for by existing models, we also present numerical simulations showing that such instabilities can be observed in chaotic laser operation. This study opens up new possibilities towards harnessing extreme events in highly-dissipative systems through adapted laser cavity configurations.

Recent progress on optical rogue waves in fiber lasers: status, challenges, and perspectives

“…80 Since then, the study of dissipative RWs in fiber lasers has been rapidly developing. [53][54][55]79,[81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97] RWs in fiber lasers can be categorized by pulse duration as three types, 94 namely slow RWs, fast RWs, and ultrafast RWs. These RWs are generated by different mechanisms.…”

“…Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) has been recently considered as a trigger effect for the generation of RWs. Experimentally, Brillouin scattering-induced RWs in self-pulsing fiber lasers, 91 Q-switched random laser, 125 and high power amplifier 126 were reported. Boukhaoui et al numerically studied the influence of SBS on the occurrence of RWs in self-pulsing fiber lasers.…”

Ytterbium-doped fiber laser as pulsed source of narrowband amplified spontaneous emission

“…Output power of DC YDFLs is scalable from several watts to tens kW 11,12,21,22 or few hundreds kW 22–25 at single-mode and multimode operation, respectively. When cavity Q-factor of YDFL is low and thus YDF gain is high, the laser turns to the regime of random kW pulses (rogue waves), driven by stimulated Brillouin scattering 26–28 .…”

A Novel Repetition Rate Adjustable SBS-Based Q-Switched Fiber Laser

“…Due to its no-feedback cavity and Q-switching mechanism, SBS-based Q-switched fiber laser have many unique features in comparison with common passively Q-switched fiber lasers, such as extreme simplicity, no wavelength limit, high peak-average power ratio and random output [8]- [10]. To date, instability of SBS-based Q-switched lasers have been successfully utilized for supercontinuum generation, rough wave study and random laser [7], [11], [12].…”