Fabrication and characterization of erbium doped waveguide amplifiers and lasers

Abstract

Planar waveguide amplifiers and lasers were fabricated using Ag film ion exchange on Er³⁺/Yb³⁺ codoped phosphate glass. The performance of these amplifiers and lasers were studied and characterized. Silver film ion exchange process was thoroughly studied and a process suitable for fabrication of low loss waveguides on Er³⁺/Yb³⁺ codoped phosphate glass was developed. A transmission loss of 0.15 dB/cm was obtained in surface waveguides on phosphate glass. Planar waveguide amplifiers were fabricated on Er³⁺/Yb³⁺ codoped phosphate glass and characterized. A net gain of 7 dB in a sample of length 4.7 cm and gain/cm of 1.5 dB/cm were achieved. Single mode waveguide laser arrays pumped by single mode laser diodes were fabricated. Their performance was characterized in terms of the output power, spectrum of the laser, lasing wavelength dependence on the waveguide width and the relative intensity noise (RIN) of the laser. The tunability of the lasing wavelength to the desired wavelength, after waveguide fabrication, by annealing was demonstrated. A novel planar waveguide laser configuration for single-mode operation around 1550 nm using cost-effective multimode diode pumping was demonstrated. The laser was fabricated by Ag film ion exchange in a hybrid phosphate glass which has active and passive regions monolithically integrated in a single glass chip. Power of 54 mW at 1538 nm was measured from the single-mode output waveguide.