Photorefractive beam coupling measurement of n/sub 2/ in erbium-doped fibers as a function of germania and aluminium contents

Summary form only given. The recent increase in the use of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) in long haul optical transmission systems has generated tremendous interest in the study of the optical nonlinearities. One of the major contributors to the optical nonlinearities in fibers is the intensity dependent refractive index (n/sub 2/). A number of techniques for measuring n/sub 2/ in fibers have been developed, but in all of these approaches, one would typically require several hundred meters of fiber length and sometimes several kilometers for experiments utilizing CW lasers. In this work, we use a new approach, the photorefractive beam coupling technique, otherwise known as induced grating autocorrelation (IGA) to measure n/sub 2/ in short lengths of fibers (z/spl les/25 m).