Modulation instability induced by intermodal cross-phase modulation in step-index multimode fiber

Based on linear stability analysis, we theoretically investigate the onset condition and gain spectrum of intermodal cross-phase modulation-induced noise-seeded modulation instability taking place in the normal dispersion regime of step-index multimode fiber, specially designed to support four modes (LP01, LP11, LP21, LP02) at 1064 nm. For the case of total power being distributed equally in certain bimodal combinations, the peak side-band frequency scales as the square root of total power, and peak gain increases linearly with total power. For the case of total power being distributed unequally, there exists an optimal power ratio to obtain peak gain, which does not depend on total power significantly. When the mode group velocity mismatch is considered, the range and peak values of gain spectra are notably increased. (c) 2019 Optical Society of America