Near and mid IR fiber Brillouin-active optical devices and applications

Implementation of some of the concepts of fiber based mid-IR optical devices using a fiber ring, which has been shown to greatly lower the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) threshold, is addressed. It is shown that when the SBS process in the fiber is viewed as an amplifying mechanism, the externally generated thermal and mechanical Brillouin noise in a linear fiber can be selectively amplified by the ring, forming an excellent ambient noise sensing element. Some preliminary data are presented.