Reducing pulse distortion in fast-light pulse propagation through an erbium-doped fiber amplifier using a mutually incoherent background field

It was reported earlier that it is possible to obtain large pulse advancement with minimum pulse distortion in fast-light propagation through an erbium-doped fiber amplifier by placing the pulse on top of a mutually coherent constant background field. Here we show that comparable distortion reduction can be obtained through use of a mutually incoherent background field, a procedure that could be much more readily implemented under many circumstances. We also show that further improvement can be obtained by means of adjusting the pulse power, and for a pulse-power of the distortion decreases about 56% from 0.56 with no background while the fractional advancement decreases only about 3% from 0.16.     

A global design of an erbium-doped fiber and an erbium-doped fiber amplifier

A global design of an erbium-doped fiber and an open-loop erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) in a steady-state operation is discussed by applying genetic algorithms. Taking a signal gain and a bandwidth as objective functions, 7 parameters of the EDFA (erbium concentration, core radius, erbium-doped radius, refractive index difference, fiber length, pumping wavelength and signal power) are optimized by solving optical propagation equations, assuming a homogenous two-level active medium and a single-mode propagation. There is evidence to show that the 1480 nm pump utilized in usual EDFAs is not an optimal choice, which should be chosen around 1460 nm. The optimal core radius ranges 0.465–0.548 μm on pumping power 50–200 mW. Under different design objects and with different pumping powers, however, there are different optimal Er-doped concentrations, reflective index differences and fiber lengths. As a single fiber EDFA, 35 dB signal gain or 35 nm bandwidth is obtained with the 7 optimal parameters, 100 mW pumping power and 0.001 mW input signal power.     

Doping radius effects on an erbium-doped fiber amplifier

In an erbium-doped fiber amplifier(EDFA), erbium ions act as a three-level system. Therefore, much higher pump energy is required to achieve the population inversion in an erbium-doped fiber(EDF). This higher pump energy requirement complicates the efficient design of an EDFA. However, efficient use of the pump power can improve the EDFA performance. The improved performance of an EDFA can be obtained by reducing the doping radius of the EDF. A smaller doping radius increases pump–dopant interactions and subsequently increases the pump–photon conversion efficiency. Decreasing the doping radius allows a larger proportion of dopant ions,which are concentrated near the core, to interact with the highest pump intensity. However, decreasing the doping radius beyond a certain limit will bring the dopant ions much closer and introduce detrimental ion–ion interaction effects. In this Letter, we show that an optimal doping radius in an EDF can provide the best gain performance. Moreover, we have simulated the well-known numerical aperture effects on EDFA gain performance to support our claim.     

Novel split-band erbium-doped fiber amplifier

In this paper we design a 120 nm bandwidth erbium-doped fiber amplifier using a seed light injection method for the first time. It is shown that when the wavelength of the seed light varies from 1520 to 1570 nm, the gain at 1610 nm reaches maximum near 1553 nm and increases as the seed light power. Based on the method, a novel split-band EDFA configuration is designed. The split-band architecture employs a 1550/1610 nm waveband multiplexer/demultiplexer and two independent sub-bands which pass in parallel through separate branches of the optical amplifier. The signals at independent sub-bands are combined and flattened before output, resulting in a broadband gain-flattened optical amplifier with 120 nm bandwidth.     

A twin-core erbium-doped fiber amplifier

We propose a twin-core erbium-doped optical fiber amplifier. It has the advantage over the conventional single core erbium-doped fiber amplifier in that it has a flat gain characteristic over a wide bandwidth, i.e. within 30 nm. By adjusting the pump power launched into one of the cores, the gain characteristic can be tuned.     

色散缓变掺铒光纤放大器的调制不稳定性

由于掺铒光纤放大器(EDFA)存在增益,相比于传输光纤它有较小的调制不稳定性阈值,使其很容易受到调制不稳定性的影响.本文将用微扰法分析基本的非线性薛定谔方程,研究色散缓变掺铒光纤放大器的调制不稳定性,分析其调制不稳定性积分增益谱与输入信号功率、放大器增益、放大器的长度、光纤纵向色散变化参量的关系.结果显示增大光纤纵向色散变化参量值是减小调制不稳定性对放大器影响的有效途径.通过分析调制不稳定增益产生长度,表明合理的选择放大器的长度可以消除调制不稳定性增益的产生.     

Variable gain-flattened L-band erbium-doped fiber amplifier

This is a study on the design of variable gain-flattened erbium-doped fiber amplifier operating in L-band transmission window. Four amplifiers divided into five stages became the basis of the design with distributed pumping configuration. A dispersion compensating module was incorporated into the architecture as a way to combat dispersion. The amplifier was able to generate variable gain from 15 up to 30 dB under different input signal powers with a maximum output power of 23 dBm. Excellent gain flatness averaging around 0.8 dB was accomplished while four-wave mixing effect was significantly reduced.     

Remote all-optical nanosecond gain switching of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier

All-optical gain switching of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier located up to 50 km away from the signal and control lasers is demonstrated. The amplifier is deactivated by optical control pulses within the amplifier bandwidth that strongly saturate the gain at the signal Wavelength. Fall times are approximately equal to the control pulse duration of 21 ns. From 25 km, a maximum extinction ratio of 16 dB is demonstrated with the signal at 1527 nm and the control pulse at 1554 nm. The dynamic range for remote switching is limited by a stimulated Raman scattering of the control pulses.     

Multiwavelength fiber laser using S-band erbium-doped fiber amplifier and semiconductor optical amplifier

A multiwavelength fiber ring laser that is based on an S-band erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is developed. An optical switch is used to switch the multiwavelength fiber laser between S-band and L-band. This fiber laser can stably lase seven wavelengths in the S-band or 28 wavelengths in the L-band. Additionally, the lasing wavelengths with a signal-to-noise ratio of over 33 dB and a wavelength spacing of 100 GHz are demonstrated experimentally. The average powers of the lasing wavelength in the S-band and the L-band are −7.53 and −12.15 dBm, respectively.     

A quantum-chaotic encoding system using an erbium-doped fiber amplifier in a fiber ring resonator

This paper firstly presents a new concept of quantum-chaotic encoding of light traveling in a fiber optic ring resonator. The pumping input power can be controlled to generate the chaotic behavior of the circulated light within the fiber ring resonator. The Kerr nonlinear type of light circulating in a fiber optic ring resonator is induced and the superposition i.e. four-wave mixing of the propagating waves at resonance occurred. The output signals can be used to generate two different codes, of which one is the quantum bits i.e. code, the other is the chaotic signal i.e. code. The proposed system has shown the potential of using for communication security, where the double security via quantum-chaotic can be performed.     

Twin-core erbium-doped fiber amplifier with channel equalization

A twin-core erbium-doped fiber amplifier has been studied. We establish the theoretical model, propose the coupled-propagation equations, and then numerically simulate the characteristics of the amplifier. It is found that twin-core erbium-doped fiber amplifier can provide different gains for signals with different input powers and self-heal the extra channel loss between amplifying stages, thus equalizes the output signal level. The twin-core erbium-doped fiber amplifier is very suitable for the future wavelength-division-multiplexed and optical frequency-division-multiplexed fiber networks.     

Superluminal pulse propagation in an erbium fiber laser

It is well known that saturating gain media can give rise to superluminal pulse propagation velocity. In most mode-locked lasers the effect is unmeasurably small and has not yet been directly demonstrated. We present experiments on the initial transient of an erbium fiber laser that show a dynamic shift in the propagation velocity to a value larger than the medium’s linear group velocity as the pulse builds up. Received: 14 December 1998 / Revised version: 21 May 1999 / Published online: 25 August 1999     

A gain-clamped S-band erbium-doped fiber amplifier using fiber Bragg grating

We propose and investigate experimentally a gain-clamped S-band erbium-doped fiber amplifier module, employing a fiber Bragg grating to serve as a reflected element to lase a saturated tone injected into the module, by forward optical feedback method. In addition, different injected powers of the saturated tone are used to realize the performances of gain and noise figure for the proposed amplifier over the effectively wavelength range of 1478-1520 nm.     

S-band depressed-cladding erbium-doped fiber amplifier with double-pass configuration

A new S-band erbium-doped fiber amplifier module with a double-pass configuration based on two circulators has been designed and constructed. The bending losses of a depressed-cladding doped fiber have been exploited to suppress the amplified spontaneous emission in the C band. The experimental characterization of the double-pass amplifier has shown that significant advantages can be obtained with respect to the single-pass configuration.     

Highly efficient short length Bismuth-based erbium-doped fiber amplifier

An efficient 21 cm Bismuth-based erbium doped fiber amplifier (Bi-EDFA) operating in both C- and L-band wavelength regions is proposed and demonstrated. The proposed Bi-EDFA uses the gain medium with an erbium ion concentration of 6300 ppm in conjunction with a double-pass configuration. Compared to conventional silica-based erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (Si-EDFAs) with the same amount of Erbium ions, the Bi-EDFA provides a higher attainable gain as well as a greater amplification bandwidth ranging from 1525 to 1620 nm. The proposed Bi-EDFA achieved a flat-gain of around 23 dB with gain variation of ±3.5 dB within the wavelength region from 1530 to 1565 nm at the maximum pump power of 150 mW. The corresponding noise figures are obtained at an average of 6 dB.     

The erbium-doped fiber amplifier: Technology and applications

The basics of active fiber technology and their application to optical amplifiers and lasers are reviewed, with particular reference to the activities of the Italian groups involved in this research. The main uses of optical amplifiers in telecommunications and the perspective of ultrafast soliton fiber lasers are presented and discussed.     

Low noise double pass L-band erbium-doped fiber amplifier

A new double pass long wavelength band erbium-doped fiber amplifier with enhanced noise figure characteristics is demonstrated. The noise figure is improved by about 2.6 dB with the incorporation of broadband conventional-band fiber Bragg grating (FBG) in between the two segments of erbium-doped fiber. By incorporating both the pre-amplifier and the FBG, the noise figure is further improved, which varies from 4.0 to 5.0 dB in the flat gain region from 1570 to 1600 nm. The gain varies from 32.0 to 33.4 dB within this region. The new amplifier with high gain and low noise figure can be useful as an inline amplifier in a wavelength division multiplexing transmission system.     

Sideband-controllable soliton pulse with bismuth-based erbium-doped fiber

A sideband-controllable soliton mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser is successfully demonstrated utilizing the nonlinear polarization rotation technique. The sidebands can be produced or suppressed by performing simple polarization light tuning with a polarization controller. It is believed that the elimination of the sidebands is due to the dispersive waves that are filtered out by the polarization-dependent isolator in the resonator. With the elimination of the Kelly sidebands, the obtained 3 d B bandwidth is 10.6 nm and the attainable pulse duration is0.86 ps. In this experiment, it is proven that the existence of Kelly sidebands limits the attainable pulse duration.     

Numerical study on adiabatic compression of ultrashort fundamental solitons in an erbium-doped fiber amplifier

In this paper, the compression and amplification of fundamental solitons in an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) are investigated by using the numerical method. The results show that the unchirped fundamental solitons can be compressed and amplified by selecting an appropriate length of the EDFA when the peak gain of the EDFA is fixed, and the compression and amplification satisfy the adiabatic condition. Furthermore, the fundamental solitons with appropriate positive chirp parameters can be compressed and amplified effectively by selecting an appropriate length of the EDFA, but the pulse compression cannot satisfy the adiabatic condition. Moreover, the compression of the fundamental solitons with negative chirp also cannot satisfy the adiabatic condition, and the compression effects are very poor. Thus, the chirp should be reduced before adiabatic compression using the EDFA.