Abstract

Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), studied since 1976 in cw-pumped fiber ring lasers [1], yields either steady or pulsed regimes. Ultracoherent cw-Stokes output has been obtained for strong quality factors [2], but with moderate finesse these cw-pumped resonators are essentially unstable [3] [4]. Bursting oscillations and chaos appear for small enough feedback [5], but up to now no generic scenario has been suggested for the generation of stable Brillouin pulses. Recent observation of dissipative superluminous solitons in a Brillouin fiber ring laser [6], whose nonlinear dynamics is described through the coherent three-wave SBS model, raises the question of a physical mechanism giving birth to such intense and short coherent structures under a cw-pumping regime.

© 1993 Optical Society of America