Dispersion engineering with stimulated Brillouin scattering and applications

Due to the Kramers-Kronig relations, the gain-loss transfer function of a medium is connected to its dispersion behavior. A possibility to artificially generate gains and losses in a medium is the nonlinear effect of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). The special advantage of SBS is that it offers a very narrow linewidth, which additionally can be broadened and adapted to the application by a modulation of the SBS pump wave, it is the nonlinear effect with the smallest threshold and optical fibers or integrated chips can be used as the nonlinear medium. Thus, the SBS offers the possibility to artificially engineer the dispersion of a medium, which can be used for many possible applications in engineering and science. Here, after a brief discussion of dispersion engineering with SBS we will emphasize two applications of this kind of dispersion engineering for additional noise-free microwave filters and the storage of light.