Stimulated thermal Rayleigh scattering in optical fibers

Recently, mode instability was observed in optical fiber lasers at high powers, severely limiting power scaling for single-mode outputs. Some progress has been made towards understanding the underlying physics. A thorough understanding of the effect is critical for continued progress of this very important technology area. Mode instability in optical fibers is, in fact, a manifestation of stimulated thermal Rayleigh scattering. In this work, a quasi-closed-form solution for the nonlinear coupling coefficient is found for stimulated thermal Rayleigh scattering in optical fibers. The results help to significantly improve understanding of mode instability. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America