Abstract

In spite of long history of R&D in the area of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in optical fibres and fibre-based systems it is still of interest and importance. Among the topical interests currently are SBS in high power fibre laser systems, SBS-induced slow light, SBS and its applications in non-traditional optical fibres (photonic crystal, chalcogenide glass, etc.) to name a few. Of the parameters that characterise SBS, perhaps the most widely used is its so called SBS threshold. It was surprising therefore for us to find that a criterion of the threshold is not unified nether between experimentalists, nor between experimentalists and theoreticians. More over the physical prerequisites, based on which currently used equation for SBS threshold (see [1]) is obtained, are not consistent with what is SBS phenomenon normally supposed to be.

© 2007 IEEE