Abstract
The concept of random lasers making use of multiple scattering in amplifying disordered media to generate coherent light has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. Here, we demonstrate a fibre laser with a mirrorless open cavity that operates via Rayleigh scattering, amplified through the Raman effect. The fibre waveguide geometry provides transverse confinement and effectively one-dimensional random distributed feedback, leading to the generation of a stationary near-Gaussian beam with a narrow spectrum, and with efficiency and performance comparable to regular lasers. Rayleigh scattering due to inhomogeneities within the glass structure of the fibre is extremely weak, making the operation and properties of the proposed random distributed feedback lasers profoundly different from those of both traditional random lasers and conventional fibre lasers.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), The Royal Society, the Russian Ministry of Science and Education and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant no. TEC2008-05791).
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S.K.T. initiated the study. A.E.E., S.I.K., D.V.C. and V.K. assembled the set-up and performed the measurements. E.V.P., S.K.T. and J.D.A. conducted the analytical analysis. J.D.A. conducted the numerical simulations. S.K.T., S.A.B. and P.H. guided the theoretical and experimental investigations. S.K.T., S.A.B., A.E.E., D.V.C., J.D.A., P.H. and E.V.P. analysed data. S.K.T. and S.A.B. wrote the manuscript.
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Turitsyn, S., Babin, S., El-Taher, A. et al. Random distributed feedback fibre laser. Nature Photon 4, 231–235 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2010.4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2010.4