Abstract
Optical amplifiers based on erbium-doped silica fibers have been revolutionizing 1550-nm fiber-optic communications.1 Their wide bandwidth, high gain, transparency to modulation format, reliability, compactness, and low power consumption are extremely attractive attributes. Clearly, there is a great demand for a similar amplifier for the 1310-nm band, the operating wavelength for the bulk of installed fiber-optic cables. In spite of much development work, an amplifier with performance comparable to Er:SiO2 does not yet exist. Praseodymium-doped heavy-metal fluoride fibers are currently the best 1310-nm optical amplifiers,2 but they are suitable mainly for laboratory use. Because of multiphonon relaxation, the Pr3+ ions exhibit a radiative quantum efficiency of only ~3% in heavy-metal fluoride glasses like ZBLAN,3 so to compensate, large amplifier pump powers ~1 Watt are used. This high drive level cannot be reliably obtained from single-mode diode lasers of the sort used to pump the Er3+:silica amplifiers.
© 1996 Optical Society of America
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