Cooperative stimulated Brillouin and Rayleigh backscattering process in optical fiber.

We observed an unusually narrow spectrum of Stokes field and Gaussian statistics of Stokes power for the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) process in 300-m single-mode optical fiber with high Rayleigh losses. The measured characteristics of the Stokes radiation indicate that SBS lasing took place in the fiber. The effect is explained as the result of dynamic distributed feedback that is due to double Rayleigh scattering (RS) of the Stokes field. The results of numerical simulation of the cooperative SBS-RS process in fiber are in good agreement with experimental results.