Four-wave mixing analysis of Brillouin dynamic grating in a polarization-maintaining fiber: theory and experiment

We investigate the Brillouin dynamic grating generation and detection process in polarization-maintaining fibers for the case of continuous wave operation both theoretically and experimentally. The four interacting light waves couple together through the material density variation due to stimulated Brillouin scattering. The four coupled equations describing this process are derived and solved analytically for two cases: moving fiber Bragg grating approximation and undepleted pump and probe waves approximation. We show that the conventional grating model oversimplifies the Brillouin dynamic grating generation and detection process, since it neglects the coupling between all the four waves, while the four-wave mixing model clearly demonstrates this coupling process and it is verified experimentally by measuring the reflection of the Brillouin dynamic grating. The trends of the theoretical calculation and experimental results agree well with each other confirming that the Brillouin dynamic grating generation and detection process is indeed a four-wave mixing process.