Er-doped Tellurite glasses for planar waveguide power amplifier with extended gain bandwidth

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Description/Abstract

Tellurite glass compositions doped with erbium and erbium/ytterbium optimised to support extended gain bandwidth with significant amplification have been fabricated, and their thermal, optical absorption, excitation and luminescence properties investigated. Each rare-earth dopant concentration was set at 1x10-20cm-3. Broad emission cross-section bandwidths up to 50nm FWHM were observed, with fluorescence lifetimes of ~3ms. Collinear pump probe measurements on ~4mm thick bulk samples revealed peak gains of up to 2.1dB/cm at a wavelength of 1535nm in the co-doped material, with an incident pump intensity of only Iinc~8kWcm-2 at a wavelength of 974nm. At equivalent absorbed pump powers between co-doped and single doped materials the relative gain was 1.25dB/cm (Iinc~4kWcm-2) and 0.9dB/cm (Iinc~8kWcm-2) respectively, demonstrating efficient energy transfer from the ytterbium to erbium ions. Excited state absorption at longer wavelengths was observed and characterised and its implication on realising sufficient gain in the wavelength band of interest is discussed