Brillouin Slow- and Fast-light: Theory and Experiments

The delay and advancement of optical pulses using slow- and fast-light is a very interesting and promising tool to realize many potential applications in various fields, such as optical communications, microwave photonics and physics. In this book the slow- and fast-light effect using stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is described. Therefore, the book covers the theory and experimental results of different approaches for an optimization and improvement of the system performance by imposing a highly reconfigurable transfer function. This includes the enhancement of the available system bandwidth, the enhancement of the maximum achievable time delay and a reduction of the induced signal distortions. Regarding the maximum limitations of the systems it is shown that SBS-based slow- and fast-light could be used to realize all-optical short-term buffers for an accurate synchronization, multiplexing and equalization of multiple high bit rate data channels as well as for phased-array antennas for instance. This book might be of much interest to communication engineers and professionals in the area of optical communications as well as for students of natural or engineering sciences.