cw three-wave mixing in single-mode optical fibers

Abstract

Strong continuous three‐wave mixing of 514.5‐nm argon laser light in a single‐mode fiber is reported. The effect, due to the third‐order nonlinearity of silica, has been observed for light whose frequency spectrum consists of either a few discrete monochromatic frequency components separated by ∼1 GHz or a quasicontinuous distribution of frequencies having a spectral envelope ∼4 GHz wide. We show that the effect provides a simple and effective method for measuring the nonlinearity of silica. In the first manifestation of the effect, the nonlinearity mixes the frequency components to produce new frequencies. In the second, multiple mixing occurs that broadens the quasicontinuous spectrum. This manifestation of the effect is large; broadening by a factor of 4 has been observed with lower intensity levels than are required to produce stimulated Brillouin scattering in the same fiber. A theoretical model is presented to describe spectral broadening by three‐wave mixing for the case of small broadening. The effect of three‐wave mixing on the operation of continuous stimulated Brillouin and Raman oscillators is also discussed. Finally, it is noted that the presence of this effect may constrain the design of long‐haul single‐mode fiber optical communication trunks.