Bi-based fibers for amplifiers and nonlinear applications

摘要

Heavy metal oxide glasses containing TeO{sub}2, PbO, Ga{sub}2O{sub}3 and Bi{sub}2O{sub}3 are well known to show high refractive index. We have developed novel bismuth oxide based glasses which show refractive indices higher than 2.0 with higher thermal stability, and have fabricated optical fiber using these glasses for erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and nonlinear applications. Er{sup}(3+) doped Bi{sub}2O{sub}3 based glass shows broadband emission and significantly low concentration quenching. Thus Bi{sub}2O{sub}3 based EDF (BIEDF) exhibits broadband gain profile covering the wavelength region from 1530 to 1620 nm with quite short length fiber [1-2]. On the other hand, bismuth oxide based glasses whose refractive index is higher than 2.2 at 1.5μm have been obtained, and thus nonlinear refractive index n{sub}2 of this glass is 40 times higher than SiO{sub}2 glass. We have also fabricated fiber using this glass and proposed highly nonlinear fiber (Bi-NLF) [3]. This Bi-NLF has been used in optical processing experiments such as all optical reshaping regeneration [4]. In this paper, short pulse amplification of BIEDF and high nonlinearity of Bi-NLF are reported.