Title :
All optical switching of a fibre laser for Brillouin-based fibre-optic sensing
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Phys., Univ. of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
Abstract :
A four port optical switch has been successfully used in the laser cavity of a Q-switched erbium doped fibre laser to allow narrow (700 MHz) and broadband (375 GHz) operation with applicability in fibre-optic Brillouin-based sensing. Periodic switching allows virtually simultaneous capturing of Brillouin and broadband Rayleigh signals, thus ensuring that the spontaneous Brillouin signal is correctly referenced even if fibre attenuation, splice or bend losses should vary during extended data collection cycles
Keywords :
Brillouin spectra; Q-switching; Rayleigh scattering; acousto-optical switches; fibre lasers; fibre optic sensors; laser cavity resonators; optical fibre losses; 375 GHz; 700 MHz; Brillouin broadband signals; Brillouin-based fibre-optic sensing; Q-switched erbium doped fibre laser; all optical switching; bend losses; broadband Rayleigh signals; data collection cycles; fibre attenuation; fibre laser; fibre-optic Brillouin-based sensing; four port optical switch; laser cavity; narrow broadband GHz operation; optical fibre losses; periodic switching; splice bend losses; spontaneous Brillouin signal; Erbium-doped fiber lasers; Fiber lasers; Fiber optics; Mirrors; Optical attenuators; Optical coupling; Optical fiber couplers; Optical fiber sensors; Optical sensors; Spatial resolution;
Conference_Titel :
Lasers and Electro-Optics Society 2000 Annual Meeting. LEOS 2000. 13th Annual Meeting. IEEE
Conference_Location :
Rio Grande
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-5947-X
DOI :
10.1109/LEOS.2000.893911
