
- Acta Photonica Sinica
- Vol. 50, Issue 7, 59 (2021)
Abstract
Keywords
0 Introduction
Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) is a process that results from a form of coherent light-sound coupling[
Up to now, a lot of research work on the BDG in optical fibers has been reported both theoretically and experimentally. In 2008, SONG K Y[
In this work, the acoustic modes in the single mode optical fiber are investigated and the BDG model is theoretically derived based on the SBS and elastic acoustic theory, the reflection spectrum of the BDG in single mode fibers is simulated, and the results are in agreement with the reported experimental results.
1 Theoretical model
1.1 Refractive index perturbation of BDG
The BDG in a single mode optical fiber can be treated as a moving refractive index grating along the optical fiber which is stimulated by a coherent acoustic wave field induced by SBS. Fig.1 shows the conceptual illustration of the BDG operation in an optical fiber. Counter propagating waves, pump1 and pump2, have the same polarization and meet in the optical fiber, the frequency offset between two pump waves is set to the Brillouin frequency shift of the fiber. The acoustic wave is driven by the beating between the pump and stokes waves; the power of pump1 is greater than that of pump2; and a probe wave with the orthogonal polarization propagates in the direction of pump1 and is reflected by the BDG for detection[
Figure 1.BDG excitation and detection
The optical fields in Fig.1 can be represented as
where
where
The frequency of acoustic wave equals Brillouin frequency shift
where
Applying Newton's second law to the volume element of fiber material, mechanics equation can be expressed by
where
We substitute Eq. (6) into the Eq. (5), one can obtain the result
The adiabatic modulus
Then Eq. (7) can be formed as
Based on the theory of elastic-acoustic, we can obtain
Then Eq. (7) can be written as
Suppose the two pump waves are all in x polarization, while the probe and the reflected waves are polarized in y direction, therefore there are only two terms left in the drive term of the acoustic field. The solution of equation under steady state condition is
The equation for the velocity of acoustic wave is conveniently expressed in terms of the compressibility
Brillouin scattering of optical wave by acoustic wave can be treated theoretically by considering the time-varying change
Substituting Eq. (3), Eq. (12) into Eq. (14), one can obtain the result
According to the third-order nonlinear effect, the refractive index can be defined as
The perturbation of refractive index associated with nonlinear effect can be expressed by
The fluctuation in the susceptibility is then given by
Ignoring the imaginary part and only using real quantities, the refractive index variation of BDG can be obtained
Then the effective refractive index of fiber can be expressed as
It is simplified as
Where
1.2 Calculation method of reflectivity
According to the coupled-mode theory of the fiber Bragg grating, the amplitude reflection coefficient can be simply given by
where
where
The reflectivity of fiber grating is expressed as
The maximum reflectivity can be expressed as
1.3 Doppler effect of the BDG
The BDG moves running along the optical fiber at the acoustic speed of v, then the reflective wave is influenced by the Doppler effect, thus the frequency of reflective wave downshifts which is given by
where
2 Simulation results and discussions
SBS occurs in a single mode fiber whose parameters are shown in Table 1. In our simulation, two short pulses are utilized as the pump waves and are initially with powers of 0.1 W and width of 2 ns. Fig. 2 shows the distribution of acoustic mode. It can be seen that all kinds of acoustic modes are mainly confined in the core[
Physical significance | Value |
---|---|
Density/(g·cm-3) Acoustic velocity/(m·s-1) Core diameter/μm Cladding diameter/μm Refractive index (1 550 nm) | 2.2 5 970 8~10 125 1.443 96 |
Table 1. The parameters in a single mode fiber
Figure 2.Distribution of the acoustic mode
Figure 3.Reflection spectrum of Brillouin dynamic grating
Figure 4.Reflection spectrum by Brillouin frequency shift and Doppler shift
Fig. 5 depicts the temporal and spatial distribution of the refractive index perturbations. It clearly indicates that there are periodic variations of perturbation along with the temporal and spatial change. The spatial variation indicates that the distribution of the refractive index is similar to that of the Bragg grating, and the temporal variation shows that the BDG is a sort of moving fiber Bragg grating.
Figure 5.Temporal and spatial distribution of refractive index perturbation
In the SBS, there is a Brillouin frequency shift between two pump waves, and the energy is transferred from the high frequency to the low frequency. According to the Eq. (19), the multiplication of electric field amplitude of two pump waves modulates the refractive index. So, the change of pump1 power plays the same part as the pump2 power. The variation of BDG's reflectivity concerning the pump1 power is shown in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7. Fig. 6 depicts the reflectivity as a function of the pump power for a pulse width of 2 ns. It is obvious that the reflectivity of the BDG varies significantly with the pump power as more pump power is applied, but the change in the spectral width is negligible. The sidelobe of the reflection spectrum is caused by the non-uniform distribution of the refractive index in the optical fiber. The variation of refractive index at both ends of the BDG produces the sidelobe. The perturbation of the refractive index is relatively weak when the power of the pump wave is small. As the power increases, the perturbation becomes violent, which makes the sidelobe gradually increases. We can see from Fig. 7 that when the pump power increases to 30 W, the peak reflectivity also enhanced, but the relationship between the power and reflectivity is non-linear and grows rapidly. When the pump power reaches 30 W, the maximum reflectivity can be as high as 2.17×10-6. It is because the stimulated Brillouin amplification becomes violent as the power of pump1 increases, the refractive index perturbations increase with the growth of pump power 1, the grating intensity is greatly extended, this enhances the reflection of BDG. These results are in agreement with the similar experiments[
Figure 6.Reflection spectrum of different pump power
Figure 7.Peak reflectivity as a function of pump power
The interaction time of the two pump waves extends as the pulse width increases, and the grating length also enhances. More energy of the incident wave is converted into the reflected wave as the grating length increases. In SBS, the increment in grating length induces actually a growth in the range of SBS effect. According to Eq. (23), the pulse width of pump1 and pump2 affects the length of BDG. As shown in Fig. 8, the pulse width also affects the reflectivity and the bandwidth of the reflection spectrum. The grating length increases with the growth of the pulse width, and the increment of the grating length leads to an enhancement of reflectivity, but the spectral width decreases accordingly. The refractive index varies with the position of BDG. The growth of the grating length induced the non-uniform distribution of the refractive index. The sidelobe becomes more significant. Fig. 9(a) shows that the spectral width as a function of the pump pulse width, the spectral width decreases from 3.5×10-4 nm to 1.2×10-4 nm with growth of pulse width. Fig. 9(b) depicts that the peak reflectivity as a function of the pump pulse width, when the pulse width is 10 ns, the maximum reflectivity is 7.16×10-9. The results agree well with the theory of the weak fiber grating[
Figure 8.Reflection spectrum of different pulse width
Figure 9.The spectral width and the peak reflectivity as a function of pump pulse width
Fig. 10 and Fig. 11 describe the reflectivity as a function of core diameter. It can be seen that the reflectivity decreases with the growth of core diameter, but the alteration of the spectral width can be ignored. BDG is also enhanced with the reduction of core diameter due to the tight confinement of both optical and acoustic fields in the fiber core. This also suggests that Brillouin interactions could be greatly magnified in the small core of the optical fiber.
Figure 10.Reflection spectrum of core diameter
Figure 11.Peak reflectivity as a function of core diameter
It is known from the above analysis that the reflectivity of the BDG is enhanced by tailoring the pump power, the pulse width and the core diameter. The maximum reflectivity can reach up to 6.63×10-5 with the pump power of 30 W, the pulse width of 10 ns and the core diameter of 8 μm. The reflectivity is still so small that it limits the application of BDG. For example, BDG is hard to introduce into the optical fiber amplifier because the amplifier needs fiber grating with high reflectivity to improve the pump conversion efficiency. But the BDG can be used as the optical fiber sensors in sensing. The BDG with low reflectivity can increase the capacity of the sensor, the wave at the same wavelength is not fully reflected and can be reused in a fiber.
3 Conclusion
In summary, the model of BDG is established, and the expression of refractive index perturbation is derived in this paper, the reflection spectrum of BDG in single mode fibers is investigated, the inference that Brillouin frequency shift is from the Doppler frequency shift is verified by the simulation result. The reflectivity is positive correlation with the pump power and pulse width, but it is negative correlation to the core diameter. The spectral width is not affected by the power of pump waves, but it is negative correlation to the pulse width and core diameter. The analysis results are in keeping with some experimental reports. BDG offers great promise for a range of applications, because it can be conveniently produced at any positions with variable length, which can be harnessed as optical communication, optical storage, and so on.
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