Abstract

As high power lasers become available in the low-loss wavelength region of the optical fibers, it becomes of increasing interest to understand in detail the onset of the nonlinear effects that limit the amount of continuous wave power that can be launched in the fiber. Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is the nonlinear effect with lowest threshold [1], but due its narrow gain bandwidth this effect can be easily suppressed by using incoherent sources or by dithering the frequency [2]. Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) has a threshold of the order of 1 W, but its large bandwidth makes it difficult to counteract, therefore it is in practice the limiting effect whenever high powers have to be transmitted through optical fiber.

© 1995 Optical Society of America