Results in Physics 54 (2023) 107087

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Results in Physics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rinp

All-optical group velocity manipulation in Mach-Zehnder fiber

interferometers incorporating with Brillouin random lasing resonance
Liang Zhang *, Haoran Xie , Yichun Li , Mengshi Zhu , Fufei Pang *, Tingyun Wang
Key Laboratory of Specialty Fiber Optics and Optical Access Networks, Joint International Research Laboratory of Specialty Fiber Optics and Advanced Communication,
Shanghai Institute for Advanced Communication and Data Science, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: We proposed and experimentally demonstrated a novel scheme of light group velocity control via a Mach-
Group velocity Zehnder fiber interferometer incorporated with Brillouin random lasing resonance in a half-open linear cavity.
Mach-Zehnder interferometer A theoretical model of the proposed Brillouin random lasing resonance-based Mach-Zehnder interferometer
Brillouin scattering
(BRLR-MZI) for the light group velocity manipulation was derived, predicting optical power-dependent trans­
Random fiber laser
mittance spectrum shift as well as the enhancement of the temporal advancement. Thanks to Brillouin random
lasing-induced fast light effect, the proposed scheme not only achieves a flexible all-optical manipulation of its
transmittance spectrum but also overcomes the saturation effect for the light speed control based on a traditional
MZI. In experimental validation, sinusoidally modulated signals with the modulation frequency of 160 kHz ul­
timately experienced a maximum advancement of 4031 ns (corresponding to the group index of 0.875), which
exhibits an advancement improvement of 1364 ns compared with the traditional MZI-based scheme. It suggests a
promising platform for exploring applications in fields of all-optical signal processing, microwave photonic, and
ultra-sensitive fiber sensing.

Introduction
In the past few decades, the manipulation of optical velocity, namely
slow and fast light (SFL), has attracted continuous interest in the fields of
all-optical communication [1–4], fiber sensing [5–7], microwave pho­
tonics [8–10], and so on. In prior research, the manipulation of light
speed has been demonstrated in various materials [11–13] and
structural-induced spectral resonances [14–16]. In particular, it has
been demonstrated that the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) as one
of the flexible approaches for the manipulation of light velocity shows
the advantages of simple structure, low cost, and wide bandwidth
[17–19]. The output waveforms of the MZIs exhibit periodic spectral
characteristics dominated by the length difference of two fiber arms.
Generally, the SFL effect appears as the light wavelength locates within
normal or abnormal spectral dispersion regimes associated with the
band of the transmission valley in such MZI. In a fiber-optic unbalanced
MZI, the time delay manipulation of the transmitted light beams can be
achieved by adjusting the optical power ratio of two branches by the
insertion of additional optical attenuation, so-called cross-intensity
modulation (XIM) [20]. More recently, the gain-assisted fiber-optic MZI
for the SFL generation has been reported to overcome the fiber loss as
well as its absorption-driven mechanism [19]. However, the group ve­
locity of transmitted light beams in such an MZI-based scheme is basi­
cally dominated by the fixed length difference between two branches of
the MZI, which hence leads to the limited range of light velocity as well
as a saturation effect, which hence greatly hinders its application. To
address this issue, the SFL-based interferometer provides a new solution
to solve the problem of fixed length difference [21,22]. By introducing
SFL into a beam of an interferometer, the phase of the output light wave
can be flexibly controlled, which has been demonstrated to improve
spectral sensitivity by magnifying the changes in phase difference and
frequency [23–27].
Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in optical fibers is one of the
most effective approaches to generate the SFL, exhibiting the advantage
of low threshold power, operation at an arbitrary wavelength, and
compatibility in optical fiber systems [28]. Self-advanced fast light
based on SBS has been proved to be an extremely simple technique,
which sustains fast light propagation by using both spontaneous
amplified and SBS [29]. Afterward, the Brillouin lasing resonance has
been proposed to speed up the group velocity of signals even for
superluminal propagation [30]. To further optimize the SBS lasing-
induced fast light efficiency, various lasing mechanisms such as a

* Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: liangzhang@shu.edu.cn (L. Zhang), ffpang@shu.edu.cn (F. Pang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rinp.2023.107087
Received 19 August 2023; Received in revised form 1 October 2023; Accepted 13 October 2023
Available online 14 October 2023
2211-3797/© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
L. Zhang et al. Results in Physics 54 (2023) 107087

Fig. 1. Schematic of BRLR-MZI.

hybrid erbium gain cavity [31] and dynamic fiber grating embedded
cavity [32] were developed. Compared with the cavity-based Brillouin
lasing resonance, the Brillouin random lasing resonance (BRLR) is
established by Brillouin gain and distributed Rayleigh scattering feed­
back along optical fibers, which benefits low-frequency noise, and
single-mode lasing resonance [33]. In particular, fast light propagation
over-kilometer-long distances can be achieved, taking advantage of the
longitudinal modes elimination intrinsically benefiting from cavity-free
random lasing resonance. Compared to the traditional Brillouin self-
advance light scheme, Brillouin random fast light can enhance two-
fold time advancement [34,35].
In this paper, we proposed and demonstrated the group velocity
control via the Mach-Zehnder interferometer incorporated with Bril­
louin random lasing resonance (BRLR-MZI). The transmittance spectrum
and total time shift in a BRLR-MZI were theoretically derived, which
proves the shift of the transmittance spectrum and the enhancement of
the total time shift by introducing BRLR-fast light into an MZI. Experi­
mental results show that the transmittance spectrum can be all-optical
controlled by tuning up the Brillouin-introduced advancement.
Compared with the MZI-based optical velocity manipulation, the total
time shift in the BRLR-MZI increases by 1364 ns at the modulated fre­
quency of 160 kHz.
Fig. 2. Simulated transmittance spectrum of the BRLR-MZI ranged from 100 to
300 kHz under different introduced advancements Ts.
Principle and simulations

The schematic of a fiber-based BRLR-MZI is depicted in Fig. 1, which that the transmittance spectrum could be introduced in the additional
phase shift ΦS = ωTs . It means that optical manipulation of the trans­
is composed of two 50:50 couplers and a BRLR-fast light element in one
fiber arm. The input pulse was sinusoidally modulated, which was mission spectrum of the interferometer can be achieved by controlling
the temporal advancement Ts . Furthermore, according to Eq. (3), the
transmitted in two arms and then experienced the phase shift Φt1 and
advancement Ts /2 is directly superimposed on the total time shift Δt,
Φt2 , respectively. The complex amplitude of the output pulse after MZI
can be written as: which indicates the introduction of the BRLR is expected to enhance the
light speed control ability of MZI. The time shift effects in the BRLR-MZI
∧
t=
1[ 2 −
E e α1
mp ej(Φ1 +Φs ) + E02 e− α2
mp ejΦ2
]
(1) are related to the power radio m and introduced advancement Ts .
2 0 Fig. 2 shows the transmittance spectrum of BRLR-MZI under the
conditions of m = 1 and Δ = 2 km. According to Eq. (2), the simulated
where E20 is the intensity split into two arms, e− αi is the transmitted loss results under the situation of Ts = 0, 450, 900 ns are plotted as dashed
in the ith branch, mp is the modulated depth. It should be noticed that the lines. It shows that the increment of the introduced advancement yields
long arm output phase shift Φt1 is the composition of the inherent phase the transmittance spectrum of the BRLR-MZI towards the high-
shift Φ1 caused by optical fibers and the additional phase shift ΦS caused frequency region. Since the SFL effects induced by the MZI are related
by the BRLR. Then, the corresponding transmittance T and total time to the transmittance, the most significant SFL happens at sharp spectral
shift Δt can be written as [20], resonance, i.e., the frequency valley within the transmittance. Conse­
1
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅ quently, the SFL-induced transmittance shift can be also verified by
T= e− 2α1 + e− 2α2 + 2e− (α1 +α2 ) cos(βΔ + Φs ) (2) measuring the time shift after MZI at each corresponding modulation
2
[ ( )] frequency. Note that, according to Eq. (2), the movement of trans­
βΔ mittance depends on the BRLR-induced time shift Ts , which was basi­
arctan 1− m
tan + Φ2s
Ts 1+m 2
cally limited by the effects of the phase-intensity modulation and
Δt = + (3)
2 ω inevitable saturation during the long-distance transmission.

where Δ = L1 − L2 is the length difference, β = nω/c is the transmission

Experimental setup
constant, n is the refractive index, ω = 2πf is the angular frequency, f is
modulation frequency, c is the light speed in the vacuum, Ts is the
The experimental setup was established as shown in Fig. 3. The pump
temporal advancement caused by the BRLR, and m = I2 /I1 is the ratio of
light from a tunable laser around 1550 nm with a linewidth of ~10 MHz
optical powers in two branches. According to Eq. (2), it obviously shows
was sinusoidally modulated through an electro-optic modulator (EOM)

2
L. Zhang et al.
Fig. 3. Experimental setup. EOM: electro-optic modulator; OC: optical coupler; EDFA: erbium-doped fiber amplifier; CIR: single-mode fiber circulator; VOA: variable
optical attenuator; FBG: fiber Bragg grating; PD: photodetector; RFG: radio frequency generator; and OSC, oscilloscope.
Fig. 4. (a) Random laser output power versus pump power (inset: laser output spectrum), (b) beat signals with 100 km delay fiber (inset: beat signal of random
laser output).
driven by a radio frequency generator (RFG). Then, the light was split
into two branches through a 50/50 optical coupler (OC). In the upper
branch, the pump light was amplified by an erbium-doped fiber ampli­
fier (EDFA#1) and launched into single mode fiber (SMF) through an
single-mode fiber circulator (SMF-CIR) from port 1 to port 2. The length
of SMF was 2 km, which was longer than the coherent length of a tunable
laser. Here, Brillouin random lasing oscillation in one fiber arm, as the
SFL element, was designed to be generated for enhancement of the op­
tical group velocity control. The Brillouin random lasing oscillation was
constructed by the fixed reflection of an FBG and the Rayleigh random
feedback along kilometers SMF. When the pump power exceeds the
random laser threshold, the Stokes random lasing resonance can be
stimulated, which motivates an enhanced-Brillouin-induced abnormal
dispersion of pump signals, and hence generates Brillouin fast light ef­
fect. Additionally, by tuning the pump wavelength, the excited Stokes
light was set within 3-dB bandwidth of the FBG, and then the majority of
Stokes light components were reflected back to the half-open random
cavity for the laser resonance and part of the Stokes laser can be emitted
through the port 3 of the SMF-CIR. With the assistance of the FBG, the
BRLR with increased lasing efficiency as well as enhanced abnormal
dispersion can be achieved, which hence allows larger time advance­
ment with respect to that of the traditional scheme without the FBG. On
the other hand, the pump wavelength was out of the central reflection
region of the FBG, so that residual pump light could transmit through the
FBG and participate in the cross-intensity modulation (XIM) effect in the
MZI. With the assistance of EDFA#2 and a variable optical attenuator
(VOA), the optical power from the lower branch can be arbitrarily
controlled, yielding the variable output power ratio
3
Results in Physics 54 (2023) 107087
m.The optical powers of each branch I1 and I2 were monitored at the
10% output port of the OCs in each fiber arm.
The light signals from the upper branch were expected to experience
temporal advancement with an increased group velocity and then
combined with that from the lower branch, resulting in the XIM effect
combined with the BRLR-based fast light. The output waveforms of the
BRLR-MZI can be captured and displayed by a photodetector (PD) and
an oscilloscope (OSC), respectively. Note that, 2-km SMF as the Brillouin
gain medium is embedded in the long fiber arm, while the fiber length of
other fiber devices can be ignored. Thus, the optical fiber length dif­
ference of this BRLR-MZI can be considered as 2 km.
Results and discussion
By measuring the output laser power from port 3 of the optical
circulator, the characteristics of the BRLR can be carried out. Fig. 4(a)
shows the output power of the Brillouin random fiber laser versus the
pump power. As the pump power exceeds 40 mW, the laser output
power gradually increases with a high slope efficiency of 61.1%. The
laser wavelength was measured as 1552.43 nm, which corresponds to
the Brillouin shift of ~0.09 nm from the pump light, as shown in the
inset of Fig. 4(a). A delayed self-heterodyne technique consisting of an
interferometer with 100 km delay fibers was used to measure the line­
width of the generated Stoeks random laser and pump light. As shown in
Fig. 4(b), the pump light was measured as ~17.1 MHz, while the Bril­
louin random laser was measured as ~4 kHz, which is extremely nar­
rower than that of the pump light. This linewidth narrowing effect of the
BRFL is mainly attributed to the combination of SBS lasing resonance
L. Zhang et al. Results in Physics 54 (2023) 107087

fm

fm

Fig. 5. (a) Temporal advancement of pump signals from the long arm with different pump powers (modulation frequency: 150 kHz), (b) Advancement versus
pump power.

fm fm

fm

Fig. 6. Temporal waveforms of output signals under different power ratios as the pump light is modulated at frequencies of (a) 160 kHz, (b) 200 kHz, and (c) 250
kHz, respectively. (d) Simulated (dashed lines) and experimental (scatter data) time advancement with different power ratios.

and distributed Rayleigh scattering.
To verify the BRLR-fast light features in the upper fiber arm, the short
fiber arm in the BRLR-MZI can be disconnected and switched to a BRLR-
fast light system. As the pump power exceeds the laser threshold, the
back-scattered Stokes light generates a Brillouin-induced loss spectral
resonance at the center frequency of pump light, which yields an
abnormal dispersion for the pump light transmission as well as the
advancement of its temporal waveforms, as shown in Fig. 5(a). Here, the
pump light was modulated as a 150 kHz sinusoidal signal for advance­
ment measurement. Fig. 5(b) shows that the temporal advancement
increases linearly with the increment of the Brillouin pump power. It is
found that the maximum advancement of the transmitted pump light is
about 900 ns when the pump power is 125.89 mW.
As the input power in the long fiber arm is lower than the laser
threshold (i.e., Ts = 0), the variation of time shift with the power ratio m
at different modulation frequencies was measured. The power radio m
can be flexibly tuned up through the assistance of the EDFA#2 and VOA.
Here, three frequencies for pump signal modulation are selected for the
measurements, located near the frequencies at minimum transmittance
(i.e., 160 kHz and 250 kHz) and at maximum transmittance (200 kHz) in
the proposed MZI. The normalized temporal waveforms are shown in
Fig. 6. At the frequency of 160 kHz, which locates at the right side of
minimum transmission frequency, the modulated signal gradually ad­
vances up to the maximum time shift of 2536 ns as the increment of m.
When the modulation frequency is set as 200 kHz near the maximum in
the transmittance spectrum, no obvious SFL effect happened, as shown
in Fig. 6(b). However, in terms of the frequency of 250 kHz at the left
side of the minimum transmission, as shown in Fig. 6(c), the signal
turned out to be temporally delayed by 1904 ns. In comparison, Fig. 6(d)
shows the advancement changes of the output signals with these three
modulation frequencies. At the frequency near the minimum trans­
mission, such as 160 kHz and 250 kHz, the time shift rapidly increases in
the range of m from 0 to 2 and then tends to saturate. While the
advancement at the frequency near the maximum transmission of 200
kHz remains constant as expected. In addition, it should be noticed the
signs of time shift are opposite at the right or left side of the minimum

4
L. Zhang et al.
Fig. 7. Simulated (dashed lines) and measured (scatter data) maximum time
shift between 130 kHz and 290 kHz under the situation of Ts = 0 ns, Ts =
450 ns, and Ts = 900 ns.
transmission. The experimental data are in good agreement with theo­
retical calculations. In this situation, the saturation effect exists in the
traditional MZI without the appearance of the BRLR and is ultimately
dominant as the parameter of the power ratios increasingly grow up.
As the input power of the long fiber arm increases beyond the laser
threshold, the influence of the BRLR-induced advancement on the total
time shift was experimentally investigated. In this experiment, the input
power of the long fiber arm was set as 6.03 mW, 102.33 mW, and 125.89
mW to correspondingly create the temporal advancements of 0 ns, 450
ns, and 900 ns, respectively. Under the situation of different introduced
advancements, we measured the variation of the time shift with the
power radio m from 0 to 10 and recorded the maximum time shift at
each modulation frequency. The recorded frequency range includes at
least one free spectral range (FSR) of the used 2 km-MZI. The relation
between the maximum time shift and frequency was shown in Fig. 7,
which maintains high consistency with the simulations according to Eq.
(3). As the increment of the BRLR-introduced advancement, the time
shift curve moved towards the high-frequency region (right direction),
which well corresponds to the theoretical change of the transmittance
spectrum in Fig. 2. It indicates that the transmittance spectrum of the
MZI can be flexibly all-optical manipulated by incorporating with the
BRLR-induced advancement. It should be pointed out that, the mismatch
between the frequency space of the pump and the Stokes laser would
occur due to the mode hopping of the Brillouin lasing resonance, which
f f
Fig. 8. Advancement measurement under the situation of fm = 160 kHz and I2 = 0.11 mW. (a) simulated (dashed line) and measured (scatter data) advancement of
the BRLR-MZI versus the reciprocal of the power radio 1/m when the long arm input power is lower than laser threshold; (b) advancement and corresponding group
index versus the long arm input power.
5
Results in Physics 54 (2023) 107087
hence imposes the fluctuation of the Brillouin loss of the pump light,
albeit with the constant pump power. It eventually attributed to the
inconsistency between the experiments and simulations.
As the modulation frequency is located at the advancement region,
the total time shift of the MZI can be enhanced by the BRLR-fast light,
which tends to obtain a higher advancement with the mitigation of the
saturation effect. Then, we measured the total time shift under the sit­
uation of fm = 160 kHz and I2 = 0.11 mW, as shown in Fig. 8. When the
long arm input power is lower than the laser threshold, i.e., a traditional
MZI, the time shift of the MZI depends on the change of the reciprocal of
the power radio 1/m. Fig. 8(a) reveals that the advancement first climbs
up in a range of 1/m from 0 to 2, then the rising speed gradually slows
down and finally tends to a saturation, which originates from fixed
length difference in the MZI. In this case, the maximum advancement is
measured as 2667 ns. Here, due to different optical power trend situa­
tions, the time shift is contrary to the situation in Fig. 6, even with the
same modulation frequency of 160 kHz. However, as the long arm input
power increases up to 40 mW (the threshold of the BRLR), the BRLR-fast
light was introduced, which basically influences the time shift of the
MZI. Based on both the XIM effect and the BRLF-fast light, the total time
shift of the MZI is dominated by two factors, i.e., the power radio of two
arms and the input power of the long arm. As shown in Fig. 8(b), the
advancement of the output signals climbs up to 4031 ns and breaks the
limit of saturation effect when the long arm input power is 112.20 mW,
corresponding to the group index of 0.875. It suggests that the proposed
BRLR-MZI exhibits good robustness of the light group velocity manip­
ulation in an all-optical manner.
It should be mentioned that the light speed control scheme based on
the proposed BRLR-MZI could be further improved in terms of the
maximum time shift and system stability. For instance, by utilizing other
special optical fibers with high Brillouin gain coefficient (e.g. high
nonlinear optical fibers and polarization-maintaining fibers), the light
speed control ability can be highly increased even with good resistance
to external disturbance. Furthermore, random feedback strength can be
highly improved for efficient random laser radiation with a low power
threshold by the utilization of random fiber gratings instead of intrinsic
Rayleigh scattering as distributed feedback [36], which is expected to
upgrade the time advancement in the BRLR-MZI scheme. In addition,
the modified structure of BRLR-MZI, such as three-arm interferometers
or cascaded interferometers, is also expected to enhance the light speed
control ability with good flexibility.
Conclusion
To summarize, the group velocity control based on a BRLR-MZI has
been proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Theoretical pre­
dictions indicate that the transmittance spectrum of the proposed MZI
could be shifted by the BRLR-induced fast light effect by adjusting the
pump powers, benefiting the enhancement of the temporal advancement
L. Zhang et al.
of the MZI. Experimental results show that 160 kHz modulated signals
propagating after the proposed BRLR-MZI experienced a time
advancement of up to 4031 ns, corresponding to the group index of
0.875. Compared with the traditional MZI under similar conditions, the
advancement increment of 1364 ns was measured. It paves the way for
exploring applications in the fields of all-optical signal processing, mi­
crowave photonic, and ultra-sensitive fiber sensing.
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (62275146,
61905138); Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Munici­
pality (20ZR1420800, SKLSFO2022-05); State Key Laboratory of
Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks
(2022GZKF004); Shanghai Professional Technology Platform
(19DZ2294000); 111 Project (D20031).
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Liang Zhang: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision,
Writing – review & editing. Haoran Xie: Investigation, Data curation,
Visualization, Writing – original draft. Yichun Li: Visualization, Inves­
tigation. Mengshi Zhu: Investigation. Fufei Pang: Supervision. Tin­
gyun Wang: Project administration, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
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