Competition between the modulation instability and stimulated Brillouin scattering in a broadband slow light device

We observe competition between the modulation instability (MI) and stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in a 9.2 GHz broadband SBS slow light device, in which a standard 20 km long single-mode LEAF fibre is used as the SBS medium. We find that MI is dominant and depletes most of the pump power when we use an intense pump beam at ∼1.55 μm, where the LEAF fibre is anomalously dispersive. The dominance of the MI in the LEAF-fibre-based system suppresses the SBS gain, degrading the SBS slow light delay and limiting the SBS gain-bandwidth to 125 dB GHz. In a dispersion-shifted highly nonlinear fibre, the SBS slow light delay is improved due to the suppression of the MI, resulting in a gain-bandwidth product of 344 dB GHz, limited by our available pump power of 0.82 W. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.