Evaluating the impact of doping concentration on the performance of in-band pumped thulium-doped fiber amplifiers

Abstract

Abstract This study is to investigate the impact of thulium concentration on the performance of in-band pumped thulium-doped silica fiber amplifiers with considering ion–ion interactions. Due to the fluorescence quenching in silica glass, the fluorescence lifetimes are required to compute at every Tm concentration. The theoretical model of fluorescence decay curves at in-band pumped thulium-doped silica fiber is used to determine the fluorescence lifetimes of the 3F4 and 3H4 levels. The calculated lifetimes of the commercially available thulium-doped silica fiber are 650 µs for 3F4 level and 14 µs for 3H4 level and these results are consentient well with the experimental reported results. The theoretical evaluating of the amplifier performance shows that the gain amplifier reduces with concentration increase because of the impact of both fluorescence quenching and the reverse cross-relaxation process. Thus, in contrast to pumping wavelength at 790 nm, there are negative effects of the high doping concentration of Tm ions on the amplifier performance at the in-band pumping scheme.