2019/11/30 by Fan Yang, Flavien Gyger, Luc Thévenaz
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Fiber Optic Sensors #Attenuation #Brillouin scattering #Brillouin zone #Laser #Light scattering #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Nonlinear optics #Optical fiber #Photonic Crystal and Fiber Optics #Photonics #Scattering #physics.app-ph #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41566-020-0676-z
published as Nature Photonics Vol. 14, pp. 700-708 (2020) · 12 pages, 6 figures. Supplementary: 20 pages, 10 figures
openalex created_date 2019/11/22 · arxiv created 2019/12/01 · openalex publication_date 2020/08/10 · arxiv updated 2020/12/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) offers among the highest nonlinear gains in solid materials and has demonstrated advanced photonics functionalities in waveguides. The large compressibility of gases suggests that SBS may gain in efficiency with respect to condensed materials. Here, by using a gas-filled hollow-core fibre at high pressure, we achieve a strong Brillouin amplification per unit length, exceeding by 6 times the gain observed in fibres with a solid silica core. This large amplification benefits from a higher molecular density and a lower acoustic attenuation at higher pressure, combined with a tight light confinement. Using this approach, we demonstrate the capability to perform large optical amplifications in hollow-core waveguides. The implementations of a low-threshold gas Brillouin fibre laser and a high-performance distributed temperature sensor, intrinsically free of strain cross-sensitivity, illustrate the large perspectives for hollow-core fibres, paving the way to their integration into lasing, sensing and signal processing.