Phase analysis of stimulated Brillouin scattering in long, graded-index optical fiber.

A continuous-wave beam was wavefront-split by a prism and propagated through separate paths before being coupled into a long, graded-index fiber. Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) was generated in the fiber and the phase of the reflection was compared to that of the pump using lateral shearing interferometers immediately after reflection and also after propagating back through the separate paths. To analyze the phase conjugating properties of SBS in the fiber, one of the paths included a pathlength oscillation. It was found that SBS from the long, graded-index fiber did not conjugate the phase of the pump. SBS formed a phase-locked beam immediately after reflection from the fiber, but did not lock the phases of the two beams after recombination as would be expected from a phase conjugate reflection.