Stable and tunable self-seeded multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium fiber laser with higher OSNR

•By applying axial strains to the SMS filter, the multiwavelengths are tunable,•The tuning range is 6.2 nm.•The generation of up to 16 Brillouin Stokes wavelengths are obtained.•The optical signal to noise ratio of multiwavelength is more than 30 dB.

A stable and tunable self-seeded multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium fiber laser (BEFL) is designed and demonstrated based on a Single-Mode-Multimode-Single-Mode (SMS) fiber filter. The SMS filter is fabricated by splicing a 15 cm long multimode fiber between two single mode fibers. The self-excited Brillouin pump is internally achieved by cascaded stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in the single mode fiber. By applying axial strain (from 0 to 466.7 μϵμϵ) to the SMS filter with the same step of 66.7 μϵμϵ, the multiwavelength of the output laser is tuned from 1553.58 to 1559.79 nm correspondingly, and the tunable range is 6.21 nm. The generation of up to 16 Brillouin Stokes wavelengths with 30 dB optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) are obtained.