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Modeling and Characterization of Cladding- Pumped Erbium-Ytterbium Co-doped Fibers for Amplification in Communication Systems

01 January 2019

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Cladding-pumped optical fiber amplifiers are of increased interest in the context of space division multiplexing but are known to suffer from low power efficiency. In this context, ytterbium (Yb) co-doping can be an attractive solution to improve the performance of erbium (Er) doped fiber amplifiers. We present a detailed direct comparison between Er/Yb co-doping and Er-doping using numerical simulations validated by experimental results. Two double-cladding fibers, one doped with Er only and the other one co-doped with Er and Yb, were designed, fabricated and characterized. Using the experimentally extracted parameters, we simulate multi-core fiber amplifiers and investigate the interest of Er/Yb-co-doping. We calculate the minimum gain of the amplifiers over a 35 nm spectral window considering various scenarios.