Pulse propagation in a fiber Bragg grating written in a slow saturable fiber amplifier

Abstract

We have developed a model to study nonlinear pulse propagation in a fiber Bragg grating written in an erbium-doped fiber amplifier. The saturation effect in such amplifiers depends on the accumulated energy along the pulse rather than on the pulse instantaneous power. We have shown that the gain saturation effect cannot be neglected when Bragg solitons are amplified by erbium-doped fiber amplifiers. The slow saturation of the amplifier limits the output pulse power, and it tends to split the amplified pulse into several pulses. We have shown that when the propagation velocity of the amplified pulses decreases, the amplifier gain per unit length increases.