Enhanced sensitivity of fiber laser sensor with Brillouin slow light

We proposed and experimentally demonstrated a new scheme for enhancing the sensitivity of a fiber laser sensor using Brillouin slow light. The Brillouin laser was exposed to environmental vibrations, producing fluctuations at 408 kHz frequency, which were then interrogated using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. By introducing Brillouin slow light into one arm of the interferometer, the sensitivity increased by 1.57 times that of a device without slow light. We believe this scheme may provide a new way of using Brillouin slow light and that it has some important implications regarding the use of fiber sensors for measuring the vibration, temperature, strain and so on.