To explore the fundamental limits on Nd3-doped fiber amplifier performance at 1 . 3 m an analysis of the smallsignal pump efficiency saturation properties and signal/noise ratio has been performed. Ignoring ESA the pump efficiency (dB/mW) is found to be only moderately sensitive to the choice of glass host indicating that ESA is the critical parameter distinguishing experimental results reported for different materials. For fundamental reasons the pump efficiency for a linear Nd3 amplifier without ESA is an order of magnitude less than for an Er amplifier and degrades still further if ESA is included. Despite the general expectation of quantum-limited performance for a four-level amplifier the noise figure is found to degrade significantly if ESA is introduced. From this analysis we conclude that applications as power amplifiers are more promising because high power conversion efficiencies can be obtained and there is less sensitivity to noise figure. Nevertheless acceptable performance in any application requires operation at wavelengths where the ESA cross section is only a small fraction of the stimulated emission cross section.
Large-signal model and signal/noise ratio analysis for Nd3+-doped fiber amplifiers at 1.3 um
Fiber Laser Sources and Amplifiers II ; 1990 ; San Jose,United States
Proc. SPIE ; 1373
1991-01-01
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
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