Experimental investigation of relative intensity noise in Brillouin fiber ring lasers for microwave photonics applications

Abstract

Intensity noise characteristics of a single-mode Brillouin fiber ring laser are experimentally analyzed from 100 kHz up to 18 GHz. The Stokes wave is shown to be shot-noise limited to -155 dB/Hz for a 1 mA detected photocurrent over the whole spectral range 100 MHz-18 GHz. The pump-to-Stokes noise filtering efficiency is evaluated by artificially increasing the pump intensity noise. It evidences that a shot-noise-limited Brillouin laser could be realized by using a narrow-linewidth semiconductor laser pump, for stringent microwave photonics applications.

Single-longitudinal-mode Brillouin fiber laser incorporating an unpumped erbium-doped fiber loop

“…In particular, attributed to the inherent characteristics of the stability and ultra-narrow linewidth, single-longitudinal mode (SLM) Brillouin fiber laser (BFL) is of a great interest in the applications such as optical spectrum analysis [7,8], microwave photonics [9,10], and laser gyroscope [11,12]. In the past decades, the SLM BFLs have been widely studied and experimentally demonstrated under the condition of a short cavity (typically tens of meters), where the free spectral range (FSR) of the cavity is larger than the Brillouin gain bandwidth, and thus the SLM operation is easily satisfied.…”

Adjustment of double resonance in short cavity Brillouin fiber lasers

“…Therefore, Brillouin gain is commonly used for narrow-line lasing in fiber configurations enabling a variety of the performance characteristics [2][3][4][5][6][7] . Lately developed Brillouin fiber lasers with a so-called doubly-resonant cavity (DRC) demonstrate low threshold, high spectral purity and low intensity noise [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] , and are very promising for a variety of special uses, such as coherent optical communication, interferometric sensing, coherent radar detection, and microwave photonics. In DRC lasers, a singlefrequency Stokes radiation is generated within a short ring cavity which is simultaneously resonant for pump and Stokes waves.…”

Double-frequency Brillouin fiber lasers

“…A class of SLM Brillouin fiber laser configurations with so-called doublyresonant cavities (DRC) [17][18][19] demonstrates low threshold, low intensity noise and high spectral purity. The Stokes radiation in such lasers is generated with a short fiber ring cavity that is simultaneously resonant for both pump and Stokes waves (see Figure 2).…”