A highly stable low-RIN hybrid Brillouin/erbium amplified laser source

We demonstrate a low-noise all-fiber hybrid Brillouin/erbium amplified source consisting of a Brillouin/erbium fiber laser with a subsequent Brillouin amplifier to boost the power and reduce the noise. The same single-mode fibers used in the fiber laser and the amplifier lead to the same amount of Stokes frequency shifts in spite of the environmental variation, ensuring stable Brillouin amplification. The hybridly amplified source features temperature insensitivity, low noise, potentially high power, and low cost. The relative intensity noise of the hybridly amplified source is ∼10 dB lower than that of the erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA)-based source at radio frequencies >200 MHz due to the filtering characteristics of the Brillouin amplification. Compared with an EDFA amplified fiber system, the spurious-free dynamic range of an analog transmission system employing such a laser source is improved by 7.7 dB owning to the lower RIN.