Innovation in fiber optic technology: better signal and low noise in random lasers

Faculty of Science
Physics
Aerial view of the campus
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the “inter-networking of physical devices, vehicles, buildings, and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity, which enable these objects to collect, exchange data and communicate with each other at very fast speeds.

Without photonics and fiber optics, the interconnectedness of physical devices and their ability to share and analyze information about their surroundings would not be possible. In photonics, noise is a general term for unwanted (and, in general, unknown) modifications that a signal may suffer during capture, storage, transmission, processing, or conversion.

Zichao Zhou, a PhD student working under the supervision of Professor Xiaoyi Bao, designed a technology to reduce noise in the optical fiber dubbed the low noise Brillouin random fiber laser. With his technology, Zichao was able to demonstrate a remarkable 20 decibel (dB) reduction in noise intensity at low frequency ranges (below 1 kHz) compared to the previous Brillouin random fiber laser. This is significant because the decibel values are on a logarithmic scale. This means that values that represent a measurement or quantity increase by multiples of 10. Thus, a 20-db reduction in noise would correspond to a 200-fold reduction in the measured noise. This low noise Brillouin random fiber laser has tremendous potential for a myriad of novel applications in the fields of coherent light sources, high-precision metrology, and optical sensing.

PhD student Zichao Zhou
PhD student Zichao Zhou

At present, Zichao is focusing on understanding the dynamics of the Brillouin random fiber laser. This work mainly involves studying the statistical properties of the laser output intensity, spectrum correlation, symmetry breaking phenomenon of photons and truly random number generation. He attributes his research success to the mentorship of his supervisor, Prof. Xiaoyi Bao, who has provided exceptionally valuable guidance throughout his PhD studies.

Zichao intends to apply for a research position in Xi’an, China to continue his research on random fiber lasers and distributed fiber sensing. He is hopeful that in the near future, distributed fiber sensing will find diverse applications in the intelligent sensing network and in structure health monitoring, all of which depend on high quality signals with very low noise.

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