Acousto-optic soliton generation via stimulated Brillouin self-scattering is predicted for light propagating at the speed of sound under electromagnetically induced transparency conditions. As in stimulated Raman self-scattering, the frequency of the electromagnetic component is gradually Stokes shifted as its intensity increases; the acoustic component has no carrier frequency. This phenomenon is explained by the possibility of forward stimulated Brillouin scattering, which is forbidden in nondispersive media. In contrast to stimulated Raman self-scattering, the Stokes shift of the electromagnetic component approaches a constant limit after the pulse has propagated to a certain distance. It is shown that the predicted soliton generation does not involve any threshold condition and can occur at extremely low input pulse intensities.
Acousto-optic soliton generation via stimulated Brillouin self-scattering is predicted for light propagating at the speed of sound under electromagnetically induced transparency conditions. As in stimulated Raman self-scattering, the frequency of the electromagnetic component is gradually Stokes shifted as its intensity increases; the acoustic component has no carrier frequency. This phenomenon is explained by the possibility of forward stimulated Brillouin scattering, which is forbidden in nondispersive media. In contrast to stimulated Raman self-scattering, the Stokes shift of the electromagnetic component approaches a constant limit after the pulse has propagated to a certain distance. It is shown that the predicted soliton generation does not involve any threshold condition and can occur at extremely low input pulse intensities.
The possibility of forming a stable optical-acoustic soliton in the regime of electromagnetically induced transparency has been analyzed under the condition that the group velocity of light in a medium with stimulated Mandelstam-Brillouin scattering decreases to the speed of sound. This possibility exists because the forward Mandelstam-Brillouin scattering, which is forbidden in a nondispersive medium, is allowed under this condition. The optical component is an envelope pulse, and the acoustic component has no carrier frequency. It has been shown that such a soliton can be formed for anomalously low input intensities of the optical pulse.
Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is generation of a narrow window in which electromagnetic field absorption is inhibited. Experimentally, a probe tuned to a certain absorption wavelength is allowed to transmit through a gaseous vapor only in the presence of a second control laser. In other words, a probe is forbidden to cause an excitation from one energy level to another through coherent coupling with a third, intermediate energy level that creates an interference pathway. In this study, Brillouin scattering analogue of EIT is demonstrated using the two optical modes that are coupled through a phase matched acoustic mode. The coherent coupling of two energy levels is emulated by the acousto-optic interaction of Brillouin scattering. The probe phase response is analyzed to estimate BSIT's effect on the velocity of light pulse. As BSIT modifies the dispersion of light, it is understood as either slowing or advancing light propagation depending on the sign of the slope of the probe phase response. Lastly, the non-reciprocity of Brillouin scattering is theoretically considered. The non-reciprocity, or a break in time reversal symmetry, is a unique property of Brillouin scattering process due to the traveling surface acoustic wave which is used for phase matching the optical modes. Therefore, BSIT can be used for applications such as optical isolation while no other transparency systems can.
An analysis is made of the propagation of a short coherent optical pulse in a three-level resonant medium with an essentially nonequidistant spectrum as a function of the degree of preexcitation of the medium. It is found that in addition to self-induced transparency and resonance scattering, stimulated Raman scattering (Stokes or anti-Stokes) should be observed under certain spatial phase-matching conditions. The area theorem is formulated for all radiation components. An analysis is made of the case of propagation of a resonant electromagnetic pulse of frequency ω in a system of three-level atoms having an equidistant spectrum. Under conditions of preexcitation of the medium at the frequency 2ω by longitudinal acoustic pulses, a scattered transverse acoustic wave at the frequency ω may be observed.
When a high-intensity laser beam passes through a transparent and homogeneous optical medium, the induced light scattering may manifest the properties of stimulated radiation characterized by threshold requirement, high directionality, and high brightness. This is the stimulated scattering of intense coherent light. Discoveries and studies of various types of stimulated scattering effects have provided a much deeper and more comprehensive understanding of interactions between the intense coherent light and matter. On the other hand, devices based on stimulated Raman scattering, stimulated Brillouin scattering, and stimulated spin-flip Raman scattering can be employed as highly efficient tunable frequency shifters of coherent light. Stimulated Kerr scattering can be used to generate a super-broadband coherent light and to investigate the molecular anisotropy of liquids. In addition, the recently developed stimulated Rayleigh–Bragg scattering and stimulated Mie scattering can significantly reduce the threshold requirement, and provide a highly efficient no-frequency-shift optical phase conjugation wave.
Frontiers in Guided Wave Optics and Optoelectronics 84 absorption is much too high to render the group effect useful.An exciting breakthrough happened in the early nineties when it was shown that group velocities of few tens of meters per second were possible with nonlinear resonance interactions (Hau et al., 1999).Two important features of nonlinear resonances make this possible: substantially reduced absorption, or even amplification, of radiation at a resonance, and sharpness of such resonances; the sharper a resonance, the higher dn/dω and so the stronger the enhancement of group index, and hence the greater the pulse is delayed.Widely ranging applications for slow light have been proposed, of which those for telecommunication systems and devices (optical delay lines, optical buffers, optical equalizers and signal processors) are currently of most interest (Gauthier, 2005).The essential demand of such devices is compatibility with existing telecommunication systems, that is they must be of wide enough bandwidth (≥10 GHz) and able to be integrated seamlessly into such systems.Of the various nonlinear resonance mechanisms and media, which allow sufficiently long induced delays, stimulated Brillouin and Raman scattering (SBS and SRS) in optical fiber are deemed to be among the best candidates.Currently SBS is the most actively investigated and many experimental and theoretical papers on pulse delaying via SBS in optical fiber have been published in the last few years, see the review paper (Thevenaz, 2008) and references therein.In this process the pulse to be delayed is a frequency down-shifted (Stokes) pulse.This is transmitted through an optical fiber through which continuous wave (CW) pump radiation is sent in the opposite direction to prime the delay process.It is supposed that the Stokes pulse is amplified by parametric coupling with the pump wave and a material (acoustic) wave in the medium (Kroll, 1965), and the amplification is characterised by a resonant-type gain profile.The dispersion of refractive index associated with this profile (which is similar to that in Fig. 1) can then be used to increase the group index for optical pulses at the Stokes frequency (Zeldovich, 1972).Along with obvious device compatibility, there are several other advantages of the SL via SBS approach for optical communications systems: slow-light resonance can be created at any wavelength by changing the pump wavelength; use of optical fibre allows for long interaction lengths and thus low powers for the pump radiation, the process runs at room temperature, it uses off the shelf telecom equipment, and SBS works in the entire transparency range of fibers and in all types of fiber.Currently a main obstacle to applications of this approach is the narrow SBS gain spectral bandwidth, (Thevenaz, 2008), which is typically ≈ 120-200 MHz in silica fiber in the spectral range of telecom optical radiation (~1.3-1.6 μm) (Agrawal, 2006).This chapter reviews our ongoing work on the physical mechanisms that give rise to pulse delay in SBS.In section 2 the theoretical background of the SBS phenomenon is given and the main working equations describing this nonlinear interaction are presented.In section 3 ways by which the SBS spectral bandwidth may be increased are addressed.Waveguide induced spectral broadening of SBS in optical fibre is considered as a means of increasing the bandwidth to the multi-GHz range.An alternative way widely discussed in the literature, (Thevenaz, 2008), is based on spectral broadening of the pump radiation.However it is shown through analytic analysis of the SBS equations converted to the frequency domain that pump radiation broadening by any reasonable amount has only a negligible effect on increasing the SBS bandwidth.Importantly in this section we show that, irrespective of the nature of the broadening considered, the SBS gain bandwidth remains www.intechopen.
We study numerically all-optical slow-light delays in room-temperature single-mode optical fibers induced by stimulated Brillouin scattering. We consider the propagation of a pulse through a cw-pumped Brillouin fiber amplifier, where the carrier frequency of the pulse is tuned near the Stokes resonance. Pulse delay and broadening of the Stokes pulse are studied in the small-signal and gain-saturation regimes. Pulse delay is shown to be limited by saturation of the Brillouin amplifier. In the small-signal regime, both time delay and pulse broadening increase with increasing gain. In the gain-saturation regime, both time delay and broadening decrease with increasing gain, and the pulse even achieves advancement. Time delay of more than one pulse-width is observed with modest pulse distortion, and over one pulse-width advancement can be obtained with larger pulse distortion in the gain-saturation regime.