Random fibre laser

The random distributed feedback (RDFB) fibre laser that provides stable, spatially incoherent continuous-wave lasing has been proved. It generates the distributed feedback fibre cavity which is formed by the Rayleigh backscattering in the fibre, and its gain is achieved by Raman amplification when the pump light enters into fibre, and its efficiency and performance are comparable to regular lasers. It is a new important type of light source for applications in nonlinear optics, detection technology and telecommunications which have attracted a great deal of attention recently. We review the research development of the random distributed feedback fibre laser and the mechanisms of the laser generation. Then, we introduce our work that two RDFB fibre laser schemes have been proposed, one is a kind of the RDFB fibre laser by cascading semiconductor lasers as pump light and the other is the wavelength tunable RDFB fibre laser.