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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Observation of slow light propagation in saturable erbium doped fiber via transient fluorescence at the fiber side

Anna Shlyagina, Marcos Plata Sánchez, Serguei I. Stepanov

Published May 5, 2011• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Erbium-doper fiber (EDF) is a flexible and promising model medium for investigation of the slow/fast light propagation in saturable optical materials. The experiments are usually performed in the spectral range 1480-1570 nm of the absorption/gain of Er3+ ions using the input power of a sub-mW scale. Conventional experimental configuration allows one to observe, however, the input and the output pulse profiles only. We report an original nondestructive technique for observation of a spatial propagation of the pulses via observation of the transient fluorescence excited by the propagating light-pulses at the fiber side, from which we are able to reconstruct how does the fractional delay and the amplitude of the propagating pulses change along the fiber. Results of a numerical simulation of the nonlinear pulse propagation performed for a saturable two-level medium in low contrast approximation proved to be in a reasonable agreement with the experimental observations.

DOI
10.1117/12.887133

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Revista Mexicana de Física•Dec 1, 2015•1 citation
Erbium-doper fiber (EDF) is a flexible and promising model medium for investigation of the slow/fast light propagation in saturable optical materials. The experiments are usually performed in the spectral range 1480-1570 nm of the absorption/gain of Er3+ ions using the input power of a sub-mW scale. Conventional experimental configuration allows one to observe, however, the input and the output pulse profiles only. We report an original nondestructive technique for observation of a spatial propagation of the pulses via observation of the transient fluorescence excited by the propagating light-pulses at the fiber side, from which we are able to reconstruct how does the fractional delay and the amplitude of the propagating pulses change along the fiber. Results of a numerical simulation of the nonlinear pulse propagation performed for a saturable two-level medium in low contrast approximation proved to be in a reasonable agreement with the experimental observations.
We report controllable (slow or fast) propagation of low-intensity probe-light pulses through erbium-doped fiber periodically saturated by the synchronized master-pulse sequence. These two pulse sequences could have significantly different carrier wavelengths within the fundamental absorption spectrum 1470-1570 nm of Er(+3) ions. The effect of fractional delay or advancement grew with the fiber optical absorption at the probe wavelength and could be significantly stronger than that at the saturating wavelength. The probe-pulse advancement was observed in the case when the saturating and probe waves were modulated approximately in antiphase. The observed effects are explained in the framework of a simple model of a periodically saturated homogeneously broadened absorption line.
Detailed experimental data on the efficiency of two-wave mixing via population dynamic grating in erbium-doped fiber (EDF) with saturable optical absorption are presented. The measurements were performed for spectral region 1490–1560 nm of the EDF absorption/gain spectrum, both for absorption and for phase (refractive index) components of the dynamic grating. The reported data confirm the earlier results published for some particular recording wavelengths. In particular, the amplitude gratings recorded in EDF in the central part of this region (1520–1560 nm) are significantly less efficient (by more than 1 order of magnitude) than it can be estimated from measurements of a spatially uniform fiber absorption saturation. It is shown, however, that this effect cannot be explained by spatial migration of the Er3+ excited state. At the short-wavelength spectrum side around 1490 nm, the disagreement between the experimentally observed and the evaluated grating amplitude is minimum (∼0.3) and can, probably, be attributed to the polarization mismatch in the counterpropagating recording waves.
We observe both extremely slow and superluminal pulse propagation speeds at room temperature in an erbium-doped fiber (EDF). A signal at 1550 nm is sent through an erbium-doped fiber with varying powers of a 980 nm pump. The degree of signal delay or advancement is found to depend significantly on the pump intensity. We observe a maximum fractional advancement of 0.124 and a maximum fractional delay of 0.089. The effect is demonstrated both for a sinusoidally modulated signal and for Gaussian pulses. The ability to control the sign and magnitude of the pulse velocity could have important implications for applications in photonics.
We report a new, to the best of our knowledge, method for detection of dynamic population gratings in Er-doped fibers with saturable absorption that is based on observation of the transient fluorescence resulting from fast displacement of the recording interference pattern. The signal appears due to essentially different relaxation times of the fluorescence in bright and dark fringes of the light pattern. The experimental results obtained at the recording wavelength λ=1492 nm in a single-mode fiber with 5600 ppm Er demonstrate good agreement with the theoretical model based on a saturable two-level system. Unlike conventional diffraction-based techniques, the proposed method results in the local grating amplitude value and can be used for characterization of the grating amplitude spatial profile. It can also be suitable for characterization of the grating formation processes in other bulk and thin-film media with saturable absorption.
For a monochromatic input signal launched into an erbium-doped fiber (EDF), a broadband fluorescence spectrum will be generated with total power approximately 30 dB lower than input signal power. The forward fluorescence power decays slowly at long EDF length due to smaller absorption cross section for wavelength components away from absorption peak. Care must be taken when the conventional cutback method is used to measure the attenuation of the optical signals in an EDF. The backward fluorescence power is saturated to a constant level, and the spectrum does not change for long EDF.>
"Experimental results on formation dynamics of population gratings in erbium-doped fiber (EDF) investigated via two-wave mixing (TWM) are reported. It is shown that at all three utilized essentially different recording wavelengths 1492, 1526 and 1568nm the transient TWM response in EDF with low erbium concentration (¼ 640 ppm) has the characteristic rate significantly larger than that of the population of the Er3+ meta-stable level evaluated from the fluorescence dynamics. Additionally in EDF with high erbium concentration (¼ 5600 ppm) the TWM response is faster (even at low recording power) and the relative TWM amplitude is lower than that in EDF with low concentration. General increase of the TWM response rate is explained by contribution of a transient decrease of the fiber average absorption level, while above-mentioned differences observed in heavily doped EDF - by spatial migration of the excited states. The spectral dependence of the later effect is attributed to the difference in the absorption/emission cross-section ratio of the Er3+ ions at the utilized wavelengths."