Observation and characterization of inhomogeneous spectral broadening of stimulated Brillouin scattering in optical fibre

Summary form only given. We report experimental results that show the SBS spectrum in an optical fibre is inhomogeneous in nature, exhibiting spectral broadening and hole burning under CW monochromatic laser excitation. We note that the nature of the anomalous inhomogeneous broadening we have reported is generic to any bulk parametric nonlinear processes involving counterpropagating beams in a guided medium. Within the class of stimulated scattering this includes stimulated thermal, entropy, enthalpy and combined thermal/Brillouin scattering processes.