Enhancing the Efficacy of Noise Modulation for SBS Suppression in High Power, Narrow Linewidth Fiber Lasers by the Incorporation of Sinusoidal Modulation

Power scaling of continuous-wave, narrow-linewidth fiber lasers are limited by the onset of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) which manifests at threshold as potentially damaging, peak power, backward propagating pulses. While several SBS mitigation techniques exist, optical linewidth broadening through external phase modulation using white noise is predominantly used for its simplicity. But the broadened line-shape is non-ideal and has a slow roll-off resulting in increased SBS seeding from reflections and hence limited power scaling. With better line-shape control, higher output powers can be achieved. In this work, we propose a simple and effective technique to improve the SBS suppression of these high power, narrow linewidth, noise broadened systems, by the addition of a sinusoidal modulation in cascade. The dual modulation results in an improved line-shape with a relatively flat topped-center and fast roll-off when compared to pure noise modulation at similar root-mean-square (RMS) linewidths. Using a multi-stage fully polarization maintaining, kW-class amplifier, we demonstrate >2.3X enhancement in SBS limited output power when compared to the pure noise modulated case at ∼7.3 GHz and >1.029 kW output power at ∼10.4 GHz RMS linewidth. © 2009-2012 IEEE.