Spontaneous pump depolarization in ultralong cavity Raman fiber laser amplifiers

We present an experimental demonstration of polarization-independent performance in a forward and backward-pumped 2nd-order ultralong cavity Raman laser amplifiers with highly polarized pumps. Our findings show that the depolarization of the Stokes component due to gain saturation leads to polarization-insensitive performance in terms of output gain and relative intensity noise in the signal. These results pave the way for the use of individual highly polarized low-RIN semiconductor laser diodes in Raman-amplified optical communications.