Abstract
The key challenge for high-power delivery through optical fibers is overcoming nonlinear optical effects. To keep a smooth output beam, most techniques for mitigating optical nonlinearities are restricted to single-mode fibers. Moving out of the single-mode paradigm, we show experimentally that wavefront-shaping of coherent input light to a highly multimode fiber can increase the power threshold for stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) by an order of magnitude, whilst simultaneously controlling the output beam profile. The SBS suppression results from an effective broadening of the Brillouin spectrum under multimode excitation, without broadening of transmitted light. Strongest suppression is achieved with selective mode excitation that gives the broadest Brillouin spectrum. Our method is efficient, robust, and applicable to continuous waves and pulses. This work points toward a promising route for mitigating detrimental nonlinear effects in optical fibers, enabling further power scaling of high-power fiber systems for applications to directed energy, remote sensing, and gravitational-wave detection.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 7343 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 13 Nov 2023 |
| Publication status | Published - 31 Dec 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2023, The Author(s).
Data Availability Statement
Data are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.835062357.Acknowledgements
Wethank Yaniv Eliezer at Yale University and Hasan Yılmaz at Bilkent University for stimulating discussions, Nicholas Bernardo and Vincent Bernardo at Yale University for technical assistance, and NP Photonics for the support.Weacknowledgethecomputationalresourcesprovided by Yale University and the University of Adelaide. This work was performed in part at the Opto Fab node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility supported by the Commonwealth and SA State Government. This work is supported bythe Air Force Office of Scientific Research(AFOSR)underGrantsFA9550-20-1-0129(H.C.andA.D.S.)and FA9550-20-1-0160 (H.E.-H. and D.J.O.), the Australian Research Council (ARC)underCE170100004,andtheNextGenerationTechnologiesF NGTF) [Research Agreement 10737] through the NGTF Directed Energy (DE) Science and Technology (S&T) Network of Australian Universities and Industry Partners. The Australian authors acknowledge the support received from the Commonwealth of Australia. S.C.W.-S. is supported by ARCFutureFellowship (FT200100154). H.E.-H. is supported by South Australian Government Future Industry Making Fellowship.ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Chemistry
- General Biochemistry,Genetics and Molecular Biology
- General Physics and Astronomy