Investigation of sub-phonon lifetime pulse amplification in active frequency matching stimulated Brillouin scattering

We demonstrate Brillouin amplification of sub-phonon lifetime Stokes pulses based on an active frequency matching method. The main purpose is to extend Brillouin amplification to further applications requiring shorter pulse widths and break the phonon lifetime limit. A combination of theoretical simulations and experiments is used to achieve this goal. As a result, the Brillouin transient gain is identified as the key parameter to achieve sub-phonon lifetime Brillouin amplification. The experimental results agree well with the theoretical simulation.