Abstract

Stimulated Brillouin scattering limits the high-power transmission capability of narrowband cw and quasi-cw signals in optical fibers. In hollow-core photonic band-gap (HC-PBG) fibers, the overlap of the optical field with solid matter is very small, resulting in optical nonlinearities which are much smaller than in standard solid core fibers, notwithstanding comparable core diameters. For the same reason, HC-PBG fibers promise very small Brillouin scattering cross sections. However, it is not a priori clear by how many orders of magnitude the Brillouin gain in HC- PBG fibers is smaller than in standard fibers and whether the gain spectrum comprises a single line or it is composed of multiple lines.

© 2007 IEEE