Tunable and switchable Brillouin multi-wavelength thulium fluoride fiber laser in S/S+ band region

In this work, a multi-wavelength fiber laser with a channel spacing of 0.17 nm operating in the S-band region is proposed and demonstrated. The proposed laser exploits the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) effect to generate the desired output using a 6.9 km long dispersion shifted fiber. A Thulium-Fluoride fiber (TFF) pumped at 1400 nm enables gain and operation in the S-band region. With a Brillouin pump (BP) wavelength of 1503.6 nm and power of 12 dBm, up to 3 well defined even Stokes lines are obtained at the maximum pump power of 250 mW. Furthermore, more even Stokes lines and anti-Stokes lines are also observed at the afore-mentioned setting, although they are less well defined as the first 3 even Stokes. The laser has an operating range of 1470-1515 nm, with tunability enabled by changing the BP wavelength. Furthermore, the spacing between the lasing wavelengths can be switched from 0.17 nm to 0.08 nm by adjusting the integrated air gap in the laser cavity, making the proposed laser highly suitable for applications such as communications and sensing. This is, the first time to the author's knowledge that such a system has been demonstrated.