Design of rare-earth doped chalcogenide microspheres for mid-IR optical amplification

The design of an optical amplifier based on an Er3+-doped chalcogenide microsphere evanescently coupled with a tapered optical fiber is illustrated. The physical phenomena as the main transitions among the erbium energy levels, the amplified spontaneous emission and the most important secondary transitions, pertaining to the ion-ion interactions, have been modeled in a 3D numerical code. The model is based on the coupled mode theory and the rate equations. The device has been designed and optimized by varying the fiber-microsphere gap, the thickness of erbium doped region, the fiber taper angle, the erbium concentration, the pump and signal powers. The simulation results highlight that the amplification system here proposed could be a good candidate to obtain a highly efficient and compact amplifier in midinfrared wavelength range.

[1]  H. Haus.  Waves and fields in optoelectronics , 1983 .

[2]  Brent E. Little,et al.  Analytic theory of coupling from tapered fibers and half-blocks into microsphere resonators , 1999 .

[3]  Vladimir S. Ilchenko,et al.  Optical microsphere resonators: optimal coupling to high-Q whispering-gallery modes , 1999 .

[4]  Michel J. F. Digonnet,et al.  Rare-Earth-Doped Fiber Lasers and Amplifiers, Revised and Expanded , 2001 .

[5]  K. Vahala,et al.  Ultralow-threshold Raman laser using a spherical dielectric microcavity , 2002, Nature.

[6]  K. Vahala,et al.  Gain functionalization of silica microresonators. , 2003, Optics letters.

[7]  P. Féron.  Whispering Gallery Mode Lasers in Erbium doped fluoride glasses , 2004 .

[8]  Alessandro Chiasera,et al.  Spectroscopic and lasing properties of Er3+-doped glass microspheres , 2006 .

[9]  Young-Shin Park,et al.  Cavity QED with diamond nanocrystals and silica microspheres. , 2006, Nano letters.

[10]  G. S. Murugan,et al.  Chalcogenide glass microspheres; their production, characterization and potential. , 2007, Optics express.

[11]  Frank Vollmer,et al.  High-Q microsphere biosensor - analysis for adsorption of rodlike bacteria. , 2007, Optics express.

[12]  Kouki Totsuka,et al.  Optical microsphere amplification system. , 2007, Optics letters.

[13]  S. Arnold,et al.  Whispering-gallery-mode biosensing: label-free detection down to single molecules , 2008, Nature Methods.

[14]  Zheng-Fu Han,et al.  Taper-microsphere coupling with numerical calculation of coupled-mode theory , 2008 .

[15]  Patrice Féron,et al.  Generalized transfer function: A simple model applied to active single-mode microring resonators , 2009 .

[16]  Kenneth T. V. Grattan,et al.  Characteristics of Er and Er–Yb–Cr doped phosphate microsphere fibre lasers , 2009 .

[17]  Hai Ming,et al.  Observation of microlaser with Er-doped phosphate glass coated microsphere pumped by 780 nm , 2010 .

[18]  Virginie Nazabal,et al.  Theoretical study of cascade laser in erbium-doped chalcogenide glass fibers , 2010 .

[19]  M. De Sario,et al.  Design of Rare-Earth-Doped Microspheres , 2010, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[20]  James S Wilkinson,et al.  Chalcogenide glass microsphere laser. , 2010, Optics express.

[21]  P. Feron,et al.  Miniaturized Optical Microwave Source Using a Dual-Wavelength Whispering Gallery Mode Laser , 2010, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[22]  I. R. Martín,et al.  Whispering gallery modes in a glass microsphere as a function of temperature. , 2011, Optics express.

[23]  James S Wilkinson,et al.  Integrated Nd-doped borosilicate glass microsphere laser. , 2011, Optics letters.

[24]  G. Righini,et al.  Whispering gallery mode microresonators: Fundamentals and applications , 2011 .

[25]  Francesco Prudenzano,et al.  Design of mid-infrared amplifiers based on fiber taper coupling to erbium-doped microspherical resonator. , 2012, Optics express.