Experimental investigation of short pulse Raman amplification with backward pumping

Guillaume Vanderhaegen (1) , Pascal Szriftgiser (1) , Matteo Conforti (1) , Alexandre Kudlinski (1) , Maxime Droques (2) , Arnaud Mussot (1)

1 PhLAM - Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, Atomes et Molécules - UMR 8523
2 Alcatel - Alcatel R&D

We report an experimental study on the backward-pumped Raman amplification of short pulses into a 20.3 km long optical fiber. We demonstrate that the gain and the pump saturation depend on the pulse duration. We also reveal that for short enough pulses, the amplification process remains linear, and very high peak powers, even larger than the Raman pump, are achievable. Numerical simulations reproduce the experimental results with excellent agreement.

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]

Guillaume Vanderhaegen, Pascal Szriftgiser, Matteo Conforti, Alexandre Kudlinski, Maxime Droques, et al.. Experimental investigation of short pulse Raman amplification with backward pumping. Optics Letters, 2021, 46 (19), pp.5019-5022. ⟨10.1364/OL.434956⟩. ⟨hal-03374878⟩