Numerical simulation of incoherent optical wave propagation in nonlinear fibers^*

¹ UEB, Université Européenne de Bretagne, Université de Rennes I, 5 boulevard Laënnec, 35000 Rennes, France
² CNRS FOTON (UMR 6082), ENSSAT, 6 rue de Kerampont, BP 80518, 22305 Lannion, France
³ QUANTEL, 4 rue Louis de Broglie, 22300 Lannion, France
⁴ IRMAR (CNRS UMR 6625), Université de Rennes I, Campus de Beaulieu, 35042 Rennes, France
⁵ IRMAR (CNRS UMR 6625), ENS Cachan Bretagne, av. Robert Schuman, 35170 Bruz, France

^a e-mail: afernand@laas.fr

Received: 11 October 2012
Revised: 3 February 2013
Accepted: 4 February 2013
Published online: 6 November 2013

Abstract

The present work concerns the study of pulsed laser systems containing a fiber amplifier for boosting optical output power. In this paper, this fiber amplification device is included into a MOPFA laser, a master oscillator coupled with fiber amplifier, usually a cladding-pumped high-power amplifier often based on an ytterbium-doped fiber. An experimental study has established that the observed nonlinear effects (such as Kerr effect, four waves mixing, Raman effect) could behave very differently depending on the characteristics of the optical source emitted by the master laser. However, it has not yet been possible to determine from the experimental data if the statistics of the photons is alone responsible for the various nonlinear scenarios observed. Therefore, we have developed a numerical simulation software for solving the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation with a stochastic source term in order to validate the hypothesis that the coherence properties of the master laser are mainly liable for the behavior of the observed nonlinear effects.