Guided Wave Optical Components and Devices

CHAPTER 9

Fiber Optic Raman Amplifiers

Govind P. Agrawal^*,     Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA

1 INTRODUCTION

Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) is the fundamental nonlinear process that turns optical fibers into broadband Raman amplifiers. Although Raman amplification in optical fibers was observed as early as 1972, until recently SRS was mainly viewed as a harmful nonlinear effect because it could also severely limit the performance of multichannel lightwave systems by transferring energy from one channel to its neighboring channels (see Chapter 6).

This chapter focuses on the SRS phenomenon from the standpoint of Raman amplifiers. Section 2 discusses the basic physical mechanism behind SRS, with emphasis ...