Abstract: Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) is often considered to be problematic since it limits optical power in telecom and RF photonics applications. However, the highly efficient and narrowband SBS process also provides unique functionality that can be used for a variety of applications. In this seminar, I will present recent work exploiting SBS for applications in distributed fiber sensing, high-resolution spectroscopy, and optical signal processing. First, I will present work showing how the complex Stokes and anti-Stokes interactions can be used to perform distributed temperature and strain measurements with immunity to cross-talk. To achieve higher sensitivity, we introduced a technique that operates by exciting up to 1000 Brillouin lasing modes simultaneously in a fiber ring cavity. We then showed that simple modifications to these temperature and strain sensing techniques can enable high-resolution spectroscopy with unique combinations of bandwidth and resolution. Finally, I will present recent work exploiting SBS to manipulate optical frequency combs on a line-by-line basis for applications in RF photonics.
About the Speaker: Dr. Brandon Redding is a research scientist in the Optical Sciences Division at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Delaware working on integrated silicon photonics. He then worked as a post-doc at Yale University developing devices based on complex photonics and random lasers. He worked for a year at the Army Research Lab developing optical trapping techniques for aerosol characterization. He then joined the Naval Research Lab in 2015, where his research has focused on distributed fiber sensors, coherent LIDAR, computational spectroscopy, and all-optical signal techniques for RF photonics.
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