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.
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.
Read more:
- Acoustic wave coupling in dual-wavelength orthogonal polarized Brillouin random fiber laser using polarization-maintaining fiber
- Review: distributed time-domain sensors based on Brillouin scattering and FWM enhanced SBS for temperature, strain and acoustic wave detection
- Characteristic Study of Noise Reduction of Brillouin Random Fiber Lasers (Zichao Zhou’s thesis)
- Distributed static and dynamic detection of an acoustic wave in a Brillouin random fiber laser
