A theoretical analysis of the effects of erbium ion pair on the dynamics of an optical gain stabilized fiber amplifier

In this paper, the effects of ion-pair formation on the gain dynamics of multi cavity optical automatic gain control erbium doped fiber amplifier is modelled. The inhomogeneous Cabezas simple model is used to write the rate and propagation equations for the active medium. The solution of the governing equations shows that in high concentration of the erbium ions, depending on the pumping rate, the relaxation oscillations are converted to nT-Periodic or even to chaotic behavior. Although the high concentration erbium ion in the optical amplifiers decreases the conversion efficiency and increases the threshold pump power, amplitude of the transient effects is reduced in the multi feedback-loop WDM amplifiers relative to the low concentration erbium ions multi feedback-loop optical amplifiers and ion-pairs, which act as a saturable absorber to compensate the gain tilt caused by the OAGC laser spectral hole burning. The theoretical results are in complete agreement with the previous published experimental results.