Heavily Tm3+-Doped Silicate Fiber for High-Gain Fiber Amplifiers

Fibers

Yin-Wen Lee¹  Han-Wei Chien¹  Che-Hang Cho¹  Ju-Zhe Chen¹  Juin-Shin Chang¹ 

[1] Department of Electro-optical Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology, 1, Sec. 3, Chung-Hsiao E. Rd, 10608, Taiwan; E-Mails:

关键词: Thulium;    silicate fiber;    fiber laser;    fiber amplifiers;   

DOI  :  10.3390/fib1030082

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

We report on investigation the potential of a 7 wt% (8.35 × 10²⁰ Tm³⁺/cm³) doped silicate fibers for high-gain fiber amplifiers. Such a high ion concentration significantly reduces the required fiber length of high-power 2 μm fiber laser systems and allows the high-repetition rate operation in 2 μm mode-locked fiber lasers. To evaluate the feasibility of extracting high gain-per-unit-length from this gain medium, we measure several key material properties of the silicate fiber, including the absorption/emission cross-sections, upper-state lifetime, fiber background loss, and photodarkening resistance. We show through numerical simulations that a signal gain-per-unit-length of 3.78 dB/cm at 1950 nm can be achieved in a watt-level core-pumped Tm³⁺-doped silicate fiber amplifier. In addition, an 18-dB 2013-nm amplifier is demonstrated in a 50-cm 7 wt% Tm³⁺-doped double-clad silicate fiber. Finally, we experimentally confirm that the reported silicate host exhibits no observable photodarkening.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.