Modeling Brillouin Gain Spectrum of Solid and Microstructured Optical Fibers Using a Finite Element Method

We report the first detailed implementation of a 2-D finite-element method (FEM) through a commercial FEM solver that can be universally applied to calculate the Brillouin gain characteristics of optical fibers with arbitrary refractive index profiles and material composition, including radially asymmetric and microstructured optical fibers (MOFs). Experimental results on various fabricated solid and MOFs are presented that demonstrate the widespread applicability and high accuracy of the proposed technique, which should prove to be an invaluable tool for designing novel optical fibers with tailored Brillouin response for a wide range of applications.