Enhancement of Brillouin Scattering Signal in Perfluorinated Graded-Index Polymer Optical Fibers

Perfluorinated graded-index polymer optical fibers (PFGI-POFs), fabricated by replacing the hydrogen atoms of standard polymethyl methacrylate-based POFs with fluorine atoms, have been extensively studied due to their relatively low propagation loss even at telecommunication wavelength. Recently, Brillouin scattering, which is one of the most significant nonlinear effects in optical fibers, has been successfully observed in PFGI-POFs at 1.55-mu m wavelength. The Brillouin Stokes signal was, however, not large enough for practical applications or for detailed investigations of the Brillouin properties. In this paper, we review our recent work on Stokes signal enhancement. First, we induce stimulated Brillouin scattering based on the so-called pump-probe technique, and discuss its applicability to temperature sensors. Then, we investigate the influence of the core diameter and length of PFGI-POFs on Stokes signal, and observe the Brillouin linewidth narrowing effect. We believe our work is an important technological step toward the implementation of practical Brillouin-based devices and systems including distributed strain and temperature sensors.