Q-switched DFB fiber laser: brillouin sensor applications

CUADRADO LABORDE, CHRISTIAN; ANDRES BOU, MIGUEL; DIEZ, ANTONIO; CRUZ, JOSE LUIS; BARMENKOV, YURI

Barcelona, Spain

Workshop; 18th International Laser Physics Workshop (LPHYS’09); 2009

ICFO

Continuous-wave distributed-feedback (DFB) fiber lasers permits to achieve ultra narrow linewidths, although the average power tends to be low, typically in the mW range. The development of actively Q-switched DFB fiber laser with high peak powers and narrow linewidths is of interest for a number of applications and, particularly, for Brillouin sensor applications. Brillouin based temperature an strain distributed fiber sensors use either an external cavity diode or a DFB fiber laser, a pigtailed external modulator and a fiber amplifier in order to generate about 100 mW peak power pulses with a time width in the nanosecond range. Thus, actively Qswitched DFB fiber lasers are good candidates to be used in such an application, introducing an important lowcost simplification of the present arrangements.