Opto-mechanical time-domain analysis based on coherent forward stimulated Brillouin scattering probing

Guided acoustic wave Brillouin scattering has gained considerable interest in recent years because of its capacity to detect mechanical features of materials surrounding the optical fiber. Nevertheless, distributed measurements using this mechanism are rarely taken because of the impracticality of the method’s forward scattering mechanism. Recently, remarkable work using ingenious schemes has managed to address the difficulty, which opens a brand new way to achieve position-resolved substance identification. However, due to the long acoustic wave lifetime and insufficient signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), current spatial resolution is restricted to 15–50 m, which is far from practical requirements. Here we propose a novel opto-mechanical time-domain analysis based on coherent forward stimulated Brillouin scattering probing to greatly improve the achievable spatial resolution. The coherent transverse acoustic wave is first created by a long activation pulse and then probed by a short two-tone probe pulse. The two-tone probing process involves a coherent stimulated interaction between the probe pulse and the excited transverse acoustic wave. The interaction, which we first propose here, shows a distinct phase-sensitive characteristic. This new coherent stimulated probing process, if it is well controlled, will enhance the forward stimulated Brillouin scattering intensity and thus improve the SNR of the sensing. Moreover, higher SNR backward stimulated Brillouin scattering is used to detect the intensity evolution of the probe pulse. Owing to this new sensing scheme combined with a more robust demodulation algorithm, we demonstrated a 2 m spatial resolution opto-mechanical measurement over a 225 m long fiber in which we were able to distinguish air from alcohol. These advances greatly facilitate the practicability of forward stimulated Brillouin scattering.