Abstract
Rare-earth-doped chalcogenide glass fiber lasers and amplifiers have great applicative potential in many fields since they are key elements in the near and medium-infrared (mid-IR) wavelength range. In this paper, a review, even if not exhaustive, on amplification and lasing obtained by employing rare-earth-doped chalcogenide photonic crystal fibers is reported. Materials, devices, and feasible applications in the mid-IR are briefly mentioned.
Highlights
The current laser market does not provide efficient sources in most of the mid-IR spectrum
The continuing technological progress and innovations in lasing materials, in fabrication of sophisticated optical fibers and of beam-shaped high-power diode lasers have positioned the optical fiber technology as one of the most promising ones in order to develop a new generation of mid-IR sources [1, 2]
The operation of lasers at 3.22, 3.45, and 3.95 microns has International Journal of Optics been obtained by doping ZBLAN fiber with holmium and erbium, but an increasing of the pump threshold and some saturation of the output power have been observed [10,11,12,13]
Summary
The current laser market does not provide efficient sources in most of the mid-IR spectrum. The operation of lasers at 3.22, 3.45, and 3.95 microns has International Journal of Optics been obtained by doping ZBLAN fiber with holmium and erbium, but an increasing of the pump threshold and some saturation of the output power have been observed [10,11,12,13] This problem combined with the use of unconventional pump sources has prevented the full utilization of these systems. Chalcogenide glasses are chemically and mechanically durable, have a low toxicity, possess reasonably large glass-forming regions, and can be fabricated into low-loss fibers Their high refractive index (2 ÷ 3) and low phonon energy (250 ÷ 400 cm−1) result in a larger radiative decay rates, high absorption and emission cross sections of radiative electronic transitions, and low nonradiative multiphonon relaxation rates. The fabrication, linear and nonlinear optical characterization, and numerical simulations in the middle infrared of PCFs in different kinds of chalcogenide glass have been presented [16, 17, 19]
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