Systematic errors induced by distortions in the pump pulse of conventional Brillouin distributed fiber sensors are thoroughly investigated. Experimental results, supported by a theoretical analysis, demonstrate that the two probe sidebands in standard Brillouin optical time-domain analyzers provide a non-zero net gain on the pump pulse, inducing severe distortions of the pump when scanning the ...

A lasing charactrization of a Brillouin/erbium optical fiber laser (BEFL) is experimentally discussed. In the BEFL, an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is incorporated into the Brillouin laser resonator to enhance small Brillouin gain, which makes the configuration of the Brillouin laser resonator easy and flexible. The experimental results show that the output power of the BEFL has a thresh...

We demonstrated the superluminal propagation at negative group velocity using stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in optical fibers. In the scheme, the Stokes wave is circulated back into the ring cavity for Brillouin lasing to enhance the peak loss. The experiment demonstrated the superluminal light propagation can be realized by increasing the input signal power. The largest time advancemen...

Numerical and experimental investigations of stimulated Brillouin scattering signal amplification in standard single-mode fibers under pump depletion show that while gains are reduced, the same orthogonal input states of polarization that provide maximum and minimum gain in the undepleted case practically continue to do so in the depleted regime. Using a scaled Brillouin gain coefficient, the p...

Optical fibre sensors based on stimulated Brillouin scattering have now clearly demonstrated their excellent capability for long-range distributed strain and temperature measurements. The Brillouin interaction causes the coupling between optical and acoustical waves when a resonance condition is fulfilled. It turns out that this resonance condition is strain and temperature-dependent, so that d...