Experimental studies on the core-structure dependence of backward Brillouin gain in solid-core photonic crystal fibers

Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in solid-core photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) differs significantly from that in standard optical fibers due to the tight confinement of both optical and acoustic fields in their µm-sized fiber cores, as resultantly evident in their Brillouin gain spectra. Despite many theoretical studies based on either simplified models or numerical simulations, the structural dependency of Brillouin gain spectra in small-core PCFs has not been characterized comprehensively using PCFs with elaborated parameter controls. In this work we report a comprehensive characterization on the core-structure dependences of backward SBS effects in solid-core PCFs that are drawn with systematically varied core-diameter, revealing several key trends of the fiber Brillouin spectrum in terms of its gain magnitude, Brillouin shift and multi-peak structure, which have not been reported in detail previously. Our work provides some practical guidance on PCF design for potential applications like Brillouin fiber lasers and Brillouin fiber sensing.