Four-wave mixing between pump and signal in a distributed Raman amplifier

We observed experimentally four-wave mixing (FWM) between a 14xx-nm pump and a 15xx-nm signal in a forward-pumped distributed Raman amplifier (DRA) over 50 km of nonzero dispersion-shifted fiber with a zero dispersion wavelength of 1497 nm. The 100-mW pump Fabry-Perot (FP) spectra centered at 1440, 1450, and 1460 nm are reproduced via FWM around the single-wavelength probe signal around 1558, 1548, and 1538 nm, respectively. The suppression of DRA gain by about 2-3 dB was experimentally observed with peak FWM at minimum phase mismatching between two 14xx-nm FP pump wavelengths and two 15xx-nm signal wavelengths. This DRA gain suppression, together with the reproduced pump FP spectrum at 15xx-nm signal band, may limit the usefulness of the forward-pumped DRA, generating spectrally nonuniform FWM-induced noise floors and crosstalk in wavelength-division-multiplexed fiber-optic transmission systems.