Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers Pumped in the 800-nm Band,

Abstract

The performance of fiber amplifiers is extremely sensitive to the material-dependent properties of the pump band. High-power, reliable, low-cost diode lasers are currently only available at 800 nm, a poor pump band for Er3+ due to the low strength of the ground state absorption (GSA) transition and an intense, overlapping excited state absorption (ESA) band. High gains have been achieved with silica fibers by pumping the long-wavelength wing of the GSA band at =820 nm 1,2, thereby avoiding the ESA at shorter wavelengths but introducing another problem by reducing the already low GSA cross section at the pump wavelength. Alternatively, the use of other glass host compositions with reduced ESA has been proposed 3. We have examined both approaches using experimentally determined parameters in a highly quantitative numerical model to compare the performance of Al/P-silica, Ge/P-silica, and fluorophosphate fiber amplifiers. The analysis was performed for co- and bi-directional pumping and included treatments of waveguide design, Er3+ confinement, pump-wavelength dependence of gain and noise figure, and quantum conversion efficiency for power amplifiers.

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 22, 1992
Accession Number
ADP006985

Entities

People

  • B. Pedersen
  • M. P. Singh
  • S. Zemon
  • W. J. Miniscalco

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Absorption
  • Amplifiers
  • Colorado
  • Conversion
  • Directional
  • Efficiency
  • Gain
  • Ground State
  • High Gain
  • Laser Diodes
  • Lasers
  • Long Wavelengths
  • Materials
  • Power Amplifiers
  • Transitions

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Electronics Engineering
  • Materials Science and Engineering.
  • Semiconductor Device Technology

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy
  • Directed Energy - Lasers
  • Quantum Computing