Double line waveguide amplifiers written by femtosecond laser irradiation in rare-earth doped germanate glasses

Abstract

We report the production of active double waveguides in Er/Yb doped GeO2-PbO glasses, by direct femtosecond laser writing. The glasses were produced using the melt-quenching technique and the active waveguides were written using 30 fs laser pulses, at 800 nm, with writing speed of 0.06 mm/s and pulse energy of 32 μJ. The photo-induced negative refractive index change was of −7.4 × 10−3. The Er/Yb doped sample showed a relative gain (signal enhancement of 7.5 dB/cm, for 105 mW of 980 nm pump power. The relative gain compensates both, the propagation losses and the absorption losses, and a positive maximum internal gain of 4.6 dB/cm can be obtained at the signal wavelength of 1550 nm. The results obtained in present work demonstrate that Er/Yb glasses are promising materials for the fabrication of integrated amplifiers, lossless components and lasers based on germanate glasses.