Investigation on the stimulated Brillouin scattering threshold with broadband KrF laser

A 1.5m long cell, different focusing lens, a KrF laser which bandwidth is 0.5cm-1, and SF6 gas as Brillouin medium are used in the experiment. The influences of focus length and SF6 pressure on threshold of stimulated Brillouin scattering excited by broadband KrF laser were investigated, respectively. The SBS threshold increases with increasing of the focus length and decreasing of the SF6 pressure. The results show that the threshold of broadband SBS is various with the different focus length and SF6 pressure. For more precisely to explain the experimental results, a novel model considering optical breakdown and pump linewidth was presented. The model we proposed here assumes that the KrF laser spectrum is made up of a seriues of narrowband spectra, each generating one Stokes wave. In addition, it is assumed further that the neighbors of one narrowband spectrum also contribute to the generation of its corresponding Stokes wave to some degree. Optical breakdown is assumed to lead to the loss of pumping energy only. The experimental results are consistent with the numerical theory.© (2005) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.