Role of optical feedback in formation of radiation properties of a Raman fiber laser with randomly distributed feedback well above generation threshold

Nonlinear effects are known to govern spectral properties of Raman fiber laser radiation well above the generation threshold, and the role of randomly distributed feedback in random fiber lasers is expected to be negligible. We numerically study spectral properties of a random fiber laser and a corresponding fiber amplifier with no feedback and emphasize the importance of Rayleigh backscattering.