Space division multiplexed multicore erbium-doped fiber amplifiers

• Published in: Journal of optics (New Delhi) Vol. 45; no. 3; pp. 231 - 239
• Main Authors: Abedin, Kazi S., Yan, Man F., Fini, John M., Thierry, Taunay F., Bansal, Lalit K., Zhu, Benyuan, Monberg, Eric M., DiGiovanni, David J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New Delhi Springer India 01-09-2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Amplification; Amplifiers; C band; Cladding; Division; Erbium; Gain; Lasers; Multiplexing; Noise; Noise levels; Optical Devices; Optics; Photonics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Pumping; Research Article; Multicore; Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers; Space division multiplexing; Few-mode; Optical fiber
• ISSN: 0972-8821; 0974-6900
• DOI: 10.1007/s12596-015-0285-2

We report on the recent development of multicore fiber amplifiers suitable for amplifying space division multiplexed signals. We have constructed 7-core amplifiers, where the cores could be pumped individually or simultaneously through the cladding, and studied the amplification and noise properties of these amplifiers. In the core-pumped amplifier, the net average gain was 25 dB, and noise figure was less than 4 dB. Using side-coupled cladding pumping, gain over 25 dB was obtained in each of the cores over a 40-nm bandwidth covering the C-band. We have further studied numerically the amplification and noise properties of a few-moded single/multicore erbium doped fiber amplifier with a doped region that extends beyond the few-mode core. We show that when excited by a multimoded pump, this can provide nearly uniform gain in C-band for modes such as, LP
01
, LP
11
, LP
21
, and LP
02
over a wide range of pump power. Differential modal gain (DMG) between LP
01
, and LP
02
was ~ 0.5 dB for a small signal gain of 32 dB at 1550 nm signal wavelength. The dependence of modal gain on the size of the doped core has also been studied.