Gain distribution measurement of an erbium-doped silica-based waveguide amplifier using a complex OLCR

Author

Takada, Kazumasa ; Oguma, Manabu ; Yamada, Hiroaki ; Mitachi, Seiko ; Golling, Matthias

Author_Institution

Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., NTT Opto-Electron. Labs., Ibaraki, Japan

Volume

9

Issue

8

fYear

1997

Firstpage

1102

Lastpage

1103

Abstract

We have measured the gain distributions of a 38-cm-long erbium-doped silica-based waveguide amplifier with different pump powers by using a complex optical low coherence reflectometer. The spatial resolution is /spl sim/5 mm and the noise level is /spl plusmn/1 dB. The measured distributions agree well with those derived from rate equations. We can estimate such amplifier parameters as the stimulated emission coefficient and the optimum waveguide length enabling us to achieve the maximum gain for any pump power.

Keywords

erbium; gain measurement; laser variables measurement; optical planar waveguides; reflectometry; solid lasers; stimulated emission; waveguide lasers; 1.53 to 1.56 mum; 38 cm; Er:SiO/sup 2/-based waveguide amplifier; Rayleigh backscatter signal; SiO/sub 2/:Er; complex OLCR; gain distribution measurement; maximum gain; noise level; optical low coherence reflectometer; optimum waveguide length; pump power dependence; rate equations; spatial resolution; stimulated emission coefficient; Coherence; Distributed amplifiers; Erbium-doped fiber amplifier; Gain measurement; Optical amplifiers; Optical noise; Optical pumping; Optical waveguides; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Stimulated emission;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/68.605514

Filename

605514