We present an approach to design glass compositions for Raman amplification among the silica-based family. The approach consists of classifying the effect of dopants on the Raman spectrum. We present several examples for designing Raman spectra. Specifically, a combination of structural modifications arising from the introduction of aluminum with a transition metal in the alkali silicate based glasses yields extremely broad and rather flat Raman gain. The obtained curve shows that the available vibrational density in these glass families is spread at the maximum leading to the widest bandwidth ever reported for silica based telecommunication glass working around 1·54±0·08 μm, i.e. 650 cm'1 for gain amplitude within ±7·5%. The Raman gain is twice that of pure silica.
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