Experimental investigation of short pulse Raman amplification with backward pumping

Abstract

We report an experimental study on the backward-pumped Raman amplification of short pulses into a 20.3 km long optical fiber. We demonstrate that the gain and the pump saturation depend on the pulse duration. We also reveal that for short enough pulses, the amplification process remains linear, and very high peak powers, even larger than the Raman pump, are achievable. Numerical simulations reproduce the experimental results with excellent agreement.