Characteristics of SBS hundreds picosecond pulse compression and influence of energy on pulse stability in FC-770

A prominent application of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is pulse sequence compression for obtaining high power and high intensity optical pulse. The characteristics and the stability of the compressed Stokes pulse were investigated using compact two-cell SBS phase-conjugation mirror. FC-770, having low absorption and high breakdown threshold at the wavelength of 1064 nm, was used as the SBS medium. Both the Stokes pulse width and the reflectivity were measured as a function of incident pump energy. In our work, a 8 ns laser pulse of 1064 nm generated by Q-switched Nd: YAG was optimally compressed to 116 ps for pump energies of 310 mJ, while the energy reflectivity is above 85%. The shortest pulses width obtained exhibit 99 ps duration. The stability of the temporal pulse widths after compression was investigated statistically. For non-optimal pump energies pulse widths become larger and the stability is found to decrease.