title: Threshold of stimulated Brillouin scattering by use of a solar pumped laser.
abstract: What is to our knowledge the first stimulated Brillouin scattering experiment using a high-power low-gain solar pumped laser is presented. A threshold reflectivity of 0.23% was reached when a peak power of 20.7 kW was used at 7.6 GHz. A cw solar pumped laser was Q-switched with an acousto-optic modulator, and the bandwidth was narrowed with an intracavity etalon. A high polarization ratio (>99.4%) was achieved by use of an intracavity configuration. Higher reflectivity values were limited because of the lack of availability of optical switches.
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Sciences and Energy Research, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. jhnir@wicc.weizmann.ac.il
authors.forename: Nir
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Naftali
authors.forename: Ruth M J
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Benmair
authors.forename: Idit
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Pe'er
authors.forename: Ammon
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Yogev