2017/07/04 by Iván R. Roa González, Bismarck C. Lima, Pablo I. R. Pincheira +7 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #physics.optics #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.flu-dyn
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/ncomms15731
published as Nature Communications 8, 1573 (2017) · 9 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2017/07/04 · arxiv updated 2019/05/06
Turbulence is a challenging feature common to a wide range of complex phenomena. Random fibre lasers are a special class of lasers in which the feedback arises from multiple scattering in a one-dimensional disordered cavity-less medium. Here, we report on statistical signatures of turbulence in the distribution of intensity fluctuations in a continuous-wave-pumped erbium-based random fibre laser, with random Bragg grating scatterers. The distribution of intensity fluctuations in an extensive data set exhibits three qualitatively distinct behaviours: a Gaussian regime below threshold, a mixture of two distributions with exponentially decaying tails near the threshold, and a mixture of distributions with stretched-exponential tails above threshold. All distributions are well described by a hierarchical stochastic model that incorporates Kolmogorov's theory of turbulence, which includes energy cascade and the intermittence phenomenon. Our findings have implications for explaining the remarkably challenging turbulent behaviour in photonics, using a random fibre laser as the experimental platform.