Abstract

A stabilized coherent narrow-linewidth Brillouin random fiber laser with low lasing noise is proposed and investigated experimentally, which employs stimulated Brillouin scattering and Rayleigh scattering in optical fibers to provide the gain and the random distributed feedback, respectively. The stabilized lasing output with suppressed noise is realized utilizing a simple structure of a double-coupler fiber ring resonator, which is composed of a section of single-mode fiber and two optical couplers with different coupling ratios. Compared with the existing free-running Brillouin random fiber lasers, much more stabilized laser output can be obtained as the double-coupler fiber ring resonator effectively acts as a narrow-bandwidth mode filter through the Vernier effect that constrains the dense random longitudinal modes competition within a small frequency range. In the experiment, a stable ultra-narrow linewidth of approximately 586.4 Hz is obtained from the laser output. Statistical analysis of mode hopping in the proposed laser indicates a great improvement in multi-mode resonances and frequency jitters with the imbedding of the ring resonator. In addition, measurement results of relative intensity noise and frequency noise of the proposed laser showcase a great suppression in mode-competition-induced lasing instability and a significant improvement in the noise level compared to the free-running Brillouin random fiber lasers. The proposed all-fiber-based stabilization technique makes a step forward for developing practically robust and reliable Brillouin random fiber lasers. Such a stabilized highly coherent narrow-linewidth laser source with low cost and low power consumption will find promising applications in high-resolution spectrometers, microwave photonics, and optical sensing.

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