Stimulated inelastic scattering effects in fiber :

Stimulated Brillouin Scattering and

Stimulated Raman Scattering
The nonlinear effects governed by the third order suceptibility (SPM, XPM,
FWM) are elastic in(3)the sense that no energy is exchanged between the

electromagnetic field and the dielectric medium.

A second class of nonlinear effects results from inelastic stimulated scattering
in which the optical field transfers part of its energy to the nonlinear medium.
Two such important effects in glass fiber are: Stimulated Brillouim Scattering
(SBS) and Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS). Both are related to the
vibrational excitations mode of silica

In the quantum mechanical approach, for both SBS and SRS, a photon of the
incident field (called the pump wave) is scattered by a molecule of silica to a
photon of lower energy (called a Stokes wave) while at the same time the
residual energy is absorbed by the molecule via phonons (transition between
vibrational states). These phonons are acoustic phonons for SBS and optical
phonons for SRS. An anti Stokes wave whose frequency is up shifted is also
generated in principle but it easy to show that it does not build up.

phonon

Si

Pump photon
O

O
Si

Stoke photon
O

Stimulated Brillouin scattering

Brillouin scattering is the interaction between light and sound waves in the
matter. It manifests itself through the generation of a backward
propagating Stokes wave downshifted from the frequency of the incident
pump wave by an amount determined by the nonlinear medium. The stoke
waves carries most of the input energy, once the Brillouin threshold is
reached.
The process of SBS can be viewed as a parametric interaction among the
pump wave, the Stoke and anti Stoke waves and an acoustic wave. The pump
field generates sound waves in the fiber which induce a periodic modulation
of the refractive index due to the pressure.

The pump induced index grating scatters the pump light thought Bragg
diffraction.
Scattered light which counter propagates with the pump is down shifted in
frequency because of the Doppler shift associated with a grating moving at
the acoustic velocity va.
A scattered wave which co propagates with the pump (anti Stokes) is up
shifted by the same amount.
The down shifted wave adds energy to the acoustic wave increasing its
intensity and therefore enhancing the effect by a positive feedback. The anti
Stokes wave, on the other hand extracts energy from the acoustic wave so
the effect dies down fast and only the backscattered wave matters.

In the quantum mechanical approach, the annihilation of a pump photon creates

simultaneously a Stoke photon and an acoustic phonon. Since both the energy
and the momentum must be conserved during the scattering event, the
frequencies and the wave vectors of the three waves are related by :

A = p s
k A = k p ks
Where p and s are the frequencies and kp and ks are the wave vectors of the
pump and Stokes waves respectively. The frequency A and the wave vector kA
of the acoustic wave satisfy the dispersion relation (using that |kp|~|ka|):

A = k A vA = 2v A k p sin ( 2 )
Where is the angle between the pump and the Stokes waves.
The frequency shift depends on the angle. In the forward direction there is no
Brillouin scattering and the maximum scattering is obtained in the backward
direction (~).

The only relevant directions in single mode fiber are the forward and
backward directions because of the well defined axis of propagation. Hence,
the only possible diffraction direction is the backward direction.
The frequency shift B in the backward direction is

vb =

A 2nva
=
2
p

With n being the refractive index and pthe pump wavelength.

The bandwidth of this process is determined by the acoustic attenuation of the
glass. For fiber the Brillouin bandwidth is DfB~20 MHz at 1550 nm
The gain peak of Brillouin scattering in silica fiber is gB~4 10-11 m/W

The coupled equations governing the pump and the Stokes wave evolutions are

dI p
gB
=

I pIs I p
d z
K

dIs = g B I I I
p s
s

d z
K

The sign refers to the backward

propagation the Stokes wave

Ip and Is are the pump and stoke intensities (Ps=IsAeff and Pp=Ip Aeff)
gB the Brillouin gain and the fiber losses. K refers to the degree of
polarization (K=1 for co polarized pump and stoke waves, 2 for randomly
polarized pump and stoke waves)

In the absence of fiber loss, because of the energy conservation during the
SBS process:
d
I p Is = 0
dz

Brillouin Threshold
SBS occurs when the incident light has a sufficiently high intensity so that
the Stoke waves growth exponentially.
In the undepleted pump approximation, the stoke power at z=0 for a pump
power Pp(0) at z=0 and a Stokes power Ps a z=L is given by

Ps ( 0 ) = Ps ( L ) e x p ( L +

The threshold power

g B P p ( 0 ) L e ff
K A e ff

th
B

L e ff =

1 - e x p ( - z )

2 1 K Aeff
f so u rce
=
+
1

fB
g B L eff

Dfsource = initial pump spectral width DfB = Brillouin gain bandwidth

The threshold power increases for CW beams whose spectral width is Dfsource
larger than the Brillouin gain line width (DfB ~20 MHz). It also increases when
short optical pulses propagate through the fiber because of their wide
bandwidth.

Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS)

SRS is a nonlinear parametric interaction between light and molecular
vibrations. SRS is similar to SBS but occurs in either forward or backward
direction. The Raman gain (gRmax~7 10-14 m/W) is about three order of
magnitude lower than Brillouin gain but its bandwidth is much wider (~13 THz
or 100 nm)
Because of SRS, in WDM systems, signals at long wavelengths are amplified
by signals at shorter wavelength

1 2 3 4

Fiber

1 2 3 4

Relative gain cross section [m/W]

Raman gain coefficient versus the frequency shift for fused

silica with a pump at 1500 nm
7

x 10

-1 4

~100 nm

5
4
3
2
1
0

10

15

20

Frequency shift [THz]

25

30

35

Explanation based on particle view

The molecule absorbs temporarily and is then in a forbidden energy state,

since in general Wn+hfp does not coincide with an allowed energy level.

The following different scenarios can occure :

= p

= p

= p
= p

= s

= p

2 = s

= s
W1
W0

Rayleigh Scattering
(losses)

Spontaneous Stokes
scattering

Stimulated Stokes
scattering

Raman Threshold
The coupled equations governing the pump and stoke waves in the co
propagating case, is

p gR
dI p
I pIs pI p
=

d z
s K

dIs = g R I I I
p s
s s
d z
K

In absence of loss,

d
dz

Is
Ip
+

p
s

= 0

That means that the total number of photons in pump and Stokes remains
the same during SRS.

In the undepleted pump approximation:

Ps ( L ) = I s ( L ) Aeff

p
eff

gr

p
= Ps (0) exp
Pp (0) L eff s z
KA

eff

1 exp(
(
=

L) )

The SRS threshold is defined as the input pump power at which Stokes wave
power becomes equal to the pump power at the fiber output

g R P p ( 0 ) L pe f f
K A e ff

1 6 fo r fo rw a rd S to k e s
2 0 fo r b a c k w a rd S to k e s

Raman induced crosstalk

In a two channel system the short wavelength signal can act as a pump and
transfer power to the longer wavelength channel : this leads to Raman
induced crosstalk

Assuming that both channel have the same losses, the Raman crosstalk is
governed by the following equation (assuming that LD>>L and 1 < 2)

d P1
d P1

+ d
=
dz
dt

1
2

gR
P 1 P 2 P1
K A e ff

d P2
gR
=
P1 P 2 P 2
dz
K A e ff

d is the walk off

parameter between the
two channels

In the two channel system, channel 1 acts as a pump and transfers a fraction
of its energy to channels 2.
This leads to an amplification in channel 2 and to an attenuation in channel 1
when there is temporal overlap of pulses from two channel pulses.
The cross talk level is strongly affected by the channel detuning because of
the walk off parameter.
To illustrate this, consider to channels separated by 100 nm with an equal
input power of 10 mW. The fiber parameters are
L=50 Km, K=1, gr=1.3 10-3 W-1 km-1, Aeff=50 m2, =0.2[dB/km]

The two channels are modulated with NRZ format at 1 Gbit/s (the
dispersion is then negligible for 50 km of regular fiber) and we examine the
influence of different walk off parameter values.

Optical power [mW]

10

z=0

5
00

10

15

20

25

30

1.2

z=50km

0.8

d=0 ps/km

0.4

Optical power [mW]

00

1
2> 1

10

15

20

25

30

1.2
0.8

z=50km

0.4

d=0.1 ps/km

00

10

15

20

25

30

1.2
0.8

z=50km

0.4

d=1 ps/km

00

10

15

Time [ns]

20

25

30

The walk off reduces the impact of the Raman crosstalk thanks to the averaging effect :
each pulse in channel 2 sees many pulses from channel 1 during the propagation