Stimulated Brillouin scattering in fibers with and without external feedback

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Abstract
We report on experimental investigations of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in single-mode optical fibers, taking fully into account the influence of external feedback from the fiber ends. A threshold condition for arbitrary external reflectivity is derived. Detailed time-series analysis reveals that for the limiting case of vanishing external reflectivity, the dynamics is purely stochastic. For finite reflectivities, the observed dynamics is periodic provided environmental perturbations are suppressed. These findings settle a recent discussion about whether there are deterministically chaotic features present in the dynamics of SBS in fibers.