Advances in Brillouin dynamic grating in optical fibers and its applications

Brillouin dynamic gratings (BDGs) in optical fibers have been developed for more than a decade and gained considerable interests in different photonics fields. Based on its features of flexibility and all-optical generation, BDG has been explored for many applications including distributed optical fiber sensing (temperature, strain, transverse pressure, hydrostatic pressure, and salinity), all-optical signal processing, all-optical delay, microwave photonic filter, and ultrahigh resolution optical spectrometry. Especially in recent years, besides the longitudinal BDG in the backward stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), the transverse BDG associated with the forward SBS has been proposed for substance identification and characterization of optical fiber diameter. In this paper, a systematically theoretical analysis of BDG in optical fibers is given and its recent ad-vances in applications is summarized.

Automated summary

Brillouin dynamic gratings (BDGs) in optical fibers have been developed for over a decade and have gained significant interest in various photonics fields. Due to their flexibility and all-optical generation, BDGs have been explored for applications such as distributed optical fiber sensing, all-optical signal processing, all-optical delay, microwave photonic filter, and ultrahigh resolution optical spectrometry. Recently, the transverse BDG associated with forward stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) has been proposed for substance identification and characterization of optical fiber diameter. This paper provides a systematic theoretical analysis of BDGs in optical fibers and summarizes their recent advances in applications.