High-gain rare-earth-doped fiber amplifier at 1.54 μm

Abstract

Optical amplifiers are of interest as wideband In-line repeaters tor telecommunications and as signal regenerators for a variety of sensor applications. Much current research has concentrated on semiconductor laser amplifiers1 which are difficult to splice to fiber systems. It is clear that an amplifier consisting of a special optical fiber which is compatible with telecommunication fiber would overcome this problem. This paper describes the first results of an optical fiber amplifier based on an Er3+-doped fiber2 which has a maximum gain at a wavelength of 1.536 μm. A single-pass gain of 26 dB and a maximum output of 13 dBm at 140 MHz has been demonstrated.