Rare Earth Doped Fiber Lasers and Amplifiers (Optical Engineering)

This text examines the current technology of rare earth doped fibres, the laser sources and amplifiers made with these fibres, and fibre communication systems incorporating erbium-doped fibre amplifiers. The book: covers fibre fabrication techniques, basic spectroscopy and optical properties of rare earth in glasses and analytical models of fibre lasers and amplifiers; describes the main passive fibre components used in the fabrication of more elaborate fibre laser devices and systems; discusses the properties of Nd-doped and Er-doped fibre lasers operated as continuous wave, Q-switched and mode-locked sources; reviews the tunability and single frequency operation of fibre laser sources, as well as broadband fibre sources; includes an extensive review of fibre lasers based on rare earth doped fluoride fibres; and treats the main fibre-based systems using erbium-doped fibre amplifiers that have been demonstrated, including long-haul experimental communication systems and local area networks for TV and computers.