Proton Irradiation Response of Hole-Assisted Carbon Coated Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers

We investigated the behavior of a new class of erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) when exposed to 63 MeV protons. The EDFA is designed with a radiation hardened hole-assisted carbon coated (HACC) Er^{3 +} -doped optical fiber. The particular structure of this HACC fiber allows to permanently incorporate an optimal amount of D₂ or H₂ gases into its core, reducing its radiation sensitivity without degrading the EDFA performances. Irradiations up to a fluence of 7.5 ×10¹¹ p/cm² confirm the excellent tolerance of this HACC-EDFA component. It exhibits a limited decrease of ~ 0.6 dB of its ~ 27 dB gain for this fluence corresponding to an ionization dose of 100 krad(Si). Such a device can then survive to the radiative environments associated with both today´s space missions and future more challenging applications.