Abstract

Optical fibre materials with very broad-band gain are of great interest for developping widely tunable miniature lasers and amplifiers for telecommunications. Chromium-doped bulk solid-state lasers material, such as YAG:Cr⁴⁺, have broad-band gain [1], and are also good saturate absorbers [2]. Therefore, it. is of great interest to develop chromium and other transition metal (TM) ion-doped optical fibres to implement their optical properties into fibre-based devices. The choice of silica as fibre material is critical, as all operating systems are based on that technotegy. As little literature exists on TM^-doped silica and fibres, baric studies on TM ions optical properties in silica optical fibres are needed.

© 2000 IEEE