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Journal of Lightwave Technology

Effects of concentration on the performance of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers

Piotr Myslinski, Dan Trung Nguyen, Jacek Chrostowski

Published Jan 1, 1997• 221 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The dependence of erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) performance on the erbium ion concentration is studied experimentally and theoretically. The quantum efficiency of the amplifier is found to he strongly dependent on the erbium ion concentration, the signal wavelength, and the relative propagation direction of the pump and signal beams. This dependence is fully explained by the presence of an upconversion mechanism between ions residing in pairs or larger clusters and suggests that other sources of amplifier performance degradation (back-ground loss, excited state absorption, homogenous upconversion) are negligible. The experimental data show that in the present EDFA designs with over 80% quantum/conversion efficiency, the aluminum co-doped fibers with erbium ion concentration less than 20/spl times/10/sup 24/ m/sup -3/ (900 molar ppm Er/sup 3+/) are most suitable.

DOI
10.1109/50.552118

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Journal of Lightwave Technology•Jul 7, 2009•5 citations
The dependence of erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) performance on the erbium ion concentration is studied experimentally and theoretically. The quantum efficiency of the amplifier is found to he strongly dependent on the erbium ion concentration, the signal wavelength, and the relative propagation direction of the pump and signal beams. This dependence is fully explained by the presence of an upconversion mechanism between ions residing in pairs or larger clusters and suggests that other sources of amplifier performance degradation (back-ground loss, excited state absorption, homogenous upconversion) are negligible. The experimental data show that in the present EDFA designs with over 80% quantum/conversion efficiency, the aluminum co-doped fibers with erbium ion concentration less than 20/spl times/10/sup 24/ m/sup -3/ (900 molar ppm Er/sup 3+/) are most suitable.
The effect of homogeneous upconversion on the performance of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is analyzed numerically, by means of a set of rate equations model. In particular, the influence of pump power, signal power, and Er/sup 3+/ concentration on the degradation, due to upconversion, is examined. Forward pumping is considered and amplified spontaneous emission, as well as scattering loss are taken into account. In addition, approximate analytical solutions, for the rate equations, which include the effect of the cooperative upconversion, are presented. It is shown that under the considered conditions, these analytical solutions provide a good approximation to the exact numerical solution and thus may be used for the design of such amplifiers.
Erbium-doped fiber amplifier(EDFA)efficiency strongly depends on erbium concentration.Highly doped erbium devices show degraded performance when compared with low concentration ones.The mechanism of upconversion is studied and the effect of it on the performance of an EDFA is analyzed numerically,by means of a set of rate equations model.Approximate analytical solutions,for the rate equations,which include the effect of the upconversion,are presented,when the amplified spontaneous emission can be neglected,compared to the pump and signal powers.Results show that the pump and signal powers all bear degradation due to upconversion.,and the effect can't be neglected when the Er3+ concentration is larger than 2.95×1025 m-3.
Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers (EDFAs) can very efficiently convert pump to signal energy. Quantum efficiencies higher than 80 % with 1.48 pm pump [1], and 93% when pumped at 980 nm [2] are reported. However, even higher values should be theoretically possible for an ideal EDFA. Various physical effects may lead to quantum efficiency (QE) reduction. Not all of them are quite well understood yet. At Erbium concentrations above 100 ppm by weight the pump loss is partly explained by energy transfer between two excited ions resulting in upcon- version process [3]. At low concentrations Excited-State Absorption (ESA) could be a more significant effect reducing QE. ESA of photons from 1.5 |im band have been predicted from absorption measurements [4] and also observed [5]. However, to our knowledge, no quantitative analysis has been made which would distinguish between the contributions of ESA and two-particle upconversion when measurements of short wavelength luminescence were performed.
Strong interest in heavily doped erbium-doped waveguides1 and in the applications of heavily doped erbium-doped fibers (EDFs) in lasers has resulted in several recent studies of collective processes in erbium ions. Rapid cross relaxation within a fraction of clustered ions, called pair-induced quenching (PIQ), has been identified as the main cause of EDF performance degradation.2-4 To date, studies on the dependence of EDF performance on ion concentration have been focused on pair/cluster-induced nonsaturable absorption of EDFs,2 which leads to the reduced quantum efficiency (QE) of EDF lasers.4 Recently, detailed theoretical analysis of the effect of PIQ on the performance of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) has also been reported.4
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.
In this paper, we investigate the effects of complex energy transfer dynamics and Gaussian profiles on the gain and noise figure performance of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) with high doping concentration. We use a two-level system to study the complex energy transfer dynamics that comes from the homogeneous up-conversion (HUC) and the pair-induced quenching (PIQ). In our model, the system is stimulated by a pump source at the wavelength of 1480 nm and operated with a signal source at the wavelength of 1560 nm. Assuming a uniform distribution of erbium ions in the fiber core, we approximate the fundamental mode distributions by Gaussian profiles which are commonly used to calculate the mode radius or spot size. Using the numerical calculations and analysis of the rate and power propagation equations for a two-level model under consideration, the most advantageous Gaussian profile is determined as the Whitley mode radius to obtain a high-gain and a low-noise figure per unit length of silica-based fiber amplifiers. The effects of the number of ions per cluster and the percentage of ions in clusters on the calculated gain and noise figure are compared for several pump powers. Results are discussed to achieve a desired gain and noise figure performance, and compared with the available experimental data to verify the feasibility of the model.