Dynamics of cascaded Brillouin-Rayleigh scattering in a distributed fiber Raman amplifier

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of a novel multiwavelength generator in which cascaded-stimulated Brillouin scattering and Rayleigh scattering are automatically balanced to given an evenly spaced (9.4-GHz), highly flattened (<3-dB) optical frequency comb over a 57.2-nm span. The extended effective length for the relevant nonlinear processes from the distributed Raman gain and the reduced Brillouin threshold from the seeding effect of Rayleigh backscattered waves are considered to be the key factors that explain the operation of this structure. (C) 2002 Optical Society of America.