Multi-wavelength continuous-wave convertor driven by forward Brillouin scattering in large effective area fiber

Abstract

Multi-wavelength wavelength convertor (MWC) has many important applications in the fields of optical communications and optical fiber sensing. In this paper, a brand-new MWC driven by forward Brillouin scattering (FBS) in a large effective area fiber (LEAF) is proposed and demonstrated. In the MWC, the incident multi-wavelength light waves excite acoustic vibration in fiber by optomechanical interactions, and causes a change in the refractive index of the fiber through electrostriction effect. The changed refractive index causes phase modulation which applied on a single-wavelength light wave with target wavelength, and the single-wavelength light wave is modulated into multi-wavelength light waves while keeping the target wavelength as the central frequency. In a proof-of-concept experiment, a 2-km long LEAF is used as wavelength conversion medium, and the obtained MWC features very low deteriorations in side-mode suppression ratio (SMSR), multi-wavelength output power flatness and signal to noise ratio (SNR). The demonstrated MWC also has a wide tunable target wavelength ranges up to 23.6 nm, discretely tunable frequency interval up to over 1 GHz, low total output power fluctuation of 4.68%, and a conversion efficiency improvement of 2.55 dB. Its good performance may provide a promising way to design high-performance multi-wavelength convertor.