Abstract

Optical fibers present a seemingly ideal medium for the generation of squeezed light. Although the nonlinear interaction is governed by a small Kerr effect, the propagation losses in fibers are so low, that long interaction lengths and large accumulated nonlinear effects are easily achieved. Experimental efforts to squeeze in fibers were pioneered by Shelby et al. [1] who used a cw pump source and heterodyne detection. These experiments led to the discovery of a new classical noise source that scattered the pump in the forward direction termed Guided Acoustic Wave Brillouin Scattering (GAWBS) [2], GAWBS are thermally induced index fluctuations of the fiber that scatter the pump and cause it to accumulate phase noise sidebands with peaks ranging in frequency from approximatley 20 MHz to 1 GHz.

© 1996 Optical Society of America