Impact of stimulated Brillouin scattering on modulation instability in fiber Fabry-Perot resonators

We report the experimental and numerical demonstration of stimulated Brillouin scattering-induced stabilization of Kerr-driven modulation instability in fiber Fabry-Perot resonators. We show that Brillouin scattering shapes the modulation instability spectrum into a stable multi-free-spectral-range cascade that is otherwise unstable in the absence of Brillouin effects. We further identify that this stabilization originates from the real part of the Brillouin response, leading to an asymmetric Kerr-Brillouin interaction governed by the relative position of the Brillouin frequency shift with respect to the cavity resonances. These results establish stimulated Brillouin scattering as an additional degree of freedom for controlling nonlinear dynamics in Kerr resonators.