Current control methods for Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) devices lack a systematic approach to provide specified performance over the entire state space. Linearization techniques are combined with heuristic switching to attain operation around specific operating points. In this paper, a more inclusive model that takes Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE) into account is developed. Furthe...

We demonstrate quasi-phase-matched difference frequency generation in periodically poled KTiOPO4. A midinfrared ~3.2–3.4 mm! idler with a power level of 0.17 mW is generated by mixing a Nd:YAG laser and tunable external cavity laser near 1550 nm which is amplified by an erbium-doped fiber amplifier. The wavelength, temperature, and angle tuning characteristics of this device are determined. The...

Multi-wavelength hybrid fiber lasers are demonstrated in both ring and linear cavities using a fabricated Erbium-doped Zirconia fiber (EDZF) and semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) as gain media. In both configurations, the a fiber loop mirror, which is constructed using a 3 m long polarization maintaining fiber (PMF) and a polarization–insensitive 3dB coupler is used as a comb filter for the...

The thermoelastic effect was used to produce high-frequency, broadband ultrasound in water. A pulsed diode laser, followed by an erbium-doped fiber amplifier, was focused onto a light-absorbing film deposited on a glass substrate. Conversion efficiency was improved by over 20 dB using an elastomeric film instead of a more commonly used metallic one. Radiation pattern measurements show that cons...

When a pulse superposed on a cw background propagates through an erbium-doped fiber amplifier with a negative group velocity, either pulse broadening or pulse compression can be observed. These effects can be explained in terms of two competing mechanisms: gain recovery and pulse spectrum broadening. The distortion of the pulse shape caused by these effects depends on input pulse width, pump po...

A simple system that simultaneously supports active mode-locking and self-seeding schemes for wavelength-tunable optical short-pulse generation is proposed. The system consists of a gain-switched Fabry-Perot laser diode, an erbium-doped fiber amplifier, a tunable optical filter, and two circulators. The mode-locked optical pulses exhibit good stability, a high side-mode suppression ratio of mor...

A tunable comb filter based on a fiber loop mirror setup, which incorporates a piece of pumped erbium-ytterbium co-doped polarization maintaining fiber, is newly presented. It is accomplished by controlling the pump power or adjusting a polarization controller in the loop mirror, which results from the fact that the effective birefringence of the erbium-ytterbium co-doped polarization maintaini...

We present a new method of measuring the guided, radiated, and total decay rates in uniform waveguides. It is also shown theoretically that large modifications of the total decay rate can be achieved in realistic erbium-doped fiber amplifiers and erbium-doped waveguide amplifiers with effective mode area radii smaller than approximately 1 microm.