Abstract

A fiber-optic ring resonator enhances the nonlinear optical interactions just as conventional resonators do.¹ Ordinarily, the effect with the lowest threshold dominates, and in a fiber that effect is usually stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), which creates a frequency shifted wave propagating around the ring in the opposite direction to the pump and clamps the circulating pump power at the Brillouin threshold. We have built an all-fiber ring resonator that incorporates a Faraday rotator optical diode which raises the SBS threshold by a factor of 100. With SBS suppressed, a variety of third-order nonlinear optical effects appear. We have developed a complete theory of these effects and observed many of them.

© 1986 Optical Society of America