Characterization of amplified spontaneous emission light source from an Er/sup 3+//Tm/sup 3+/ co-doped silica fiber

Summary form only given. Incoherent broadband optical sources have been applied in various areas such as a light source for optical device characterization, fiber-optic gyroscopes, and spectrum sliced light source in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) system. To utilize the inherent low loss in silica optical fibers, various types of incoherent light sources are being developed. Among the light sources, the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) from a rare-earth-doped fiber has benefits in temperature stability, high output power and low polarization dependence over semiconductor diodes. Recently erbium-doped fibers (EDR) have been intensively researched for ASE sources as well as optical amplifiers. The spectrum of ASE from an EDF, however, is limited in the 1520-1560 nm range in conventional configurations. We describe a new broadband ASE source, which included both the conventional ASE band of the Er ion, 1526 nm/spl sim/1560 nm and ASE band from Tm ions that extends the bandwidth further. For the first time, to the best knowledge of authors, a fiber ASE source based on the energy transfer between Er/sup 3+/ and Tm/sup 3+/ ions in the range of 1460-1550 nm, has been demonstrated using a single 980-nm pump laser diode.