In recent years, infrared light sources have attracted great attention for their application in remote sensing, sensors, optical communication, medical and military technology, and so on. Innovative erbium-doped microstructured optical fiber ring lasers (EDFRLs) have been proposed in order to increase the performance of the conventional fiber lasers, enabling a number of advantages such as smaller size, higher power, better beam quality. In a previous work, the authors proposed a design of a Fabry Perot laser made of a novel erbium-doped
Ga5Ge20Sb10S65 chalcogenide glass, operating in the Mid-IR wavelength range. This work reports the design of a ring laser, made of the same glass, operating at the signal wavelength λs = 4600 nm and at the pump wavelength λp = 806 nm. The design and optimization has been performed in order to improve the laser performance. The numerical computer code, implemented ad-hoc to investigate the fiber ring laser, takes into account the rate equations of the 5-level erbium ion system, the pump and signal power propagation, the energy transfer of the
up-conversion and cross-relaxation phenomena, the cavity losses and the coupling losses. The measured amplified spontaneous emission ASE power spectrum has been accurately sampled in 150 wavelength slots from λ1=4200 nm to λ2=4800 nm, to obtain more realistic simulations.
Due to remarkable properties of the chalcogenide glasses, especially sulphide glasses, amorphous chalcogenide films
should play a motivating role in the development of integrated planar optical circuits and their components. This paper
describes the fabrication and properties of optical waveguides of pure and rare earth doped sulphide glass films prepared
by two complementary techniques: RF magnetron sputtering and pulsed laser deposition (PLD). The deposition
parameters were adjusted to obtain, from sulphide glass targets with a careful control of their purity, layers with
appropriate compositional, morphological, structural characteristics and optical properties. These films have been
characterized by micro-Raman spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction technique (XRD) and
scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive X-ray measurements (EDX). Their optical
properties were measured thanks to m-lines prism coupling and near field methods. Rib waveguides were produced by
dry etching under CF4, CHF3 and SF6 atmosphere. The photo-luminescence of rare earth doped GeGaSbS films were
clearly observed in the n-IR spectral domain and the study of their decay lifetime will be presented. First tests were
carried out to functionalise the films with the aim of using them as sensor.
Mid-infrared (IR) lasers are of interest for a variety of applications including environmental sensing, LIDAR and
military counter measures. However, this wavelength range lacks powerful, coherent, robust and compact sources. A
solution can lie in chalcogenide glasses as host materials for rare earth ions. With an extended infrared transparency, low
phonon energy limiting the non radiative multiphonon relaxation rates and suitable rare earth solubility, sulfide glasses
based on Ge-Ga-Sb-S system make available radiative transitions in the mid-IR range. The glasses with nominal
composition of Ge20Ga5Sb10S65 doped with Er3+ (500 to 10000 ppm) were prepared by means of conventional melting
and quenching method. The Er3+, widely studied in glass fibers for near-IR amplification, was initially selected for the
transition 4I9/2 to 4I11/2 emitting at around 4.5 &mgr;m in order to demonstrate the ability of this sulfide composition for midinfrared
fiber lasers application. In these objectives, absorption and emission spectra have been recorded and the
radiative decay lifetime of excited levels (4I9/2, 4I11/2 and 4I13/2) has been determined. These last experimental results were
compared with those obtained by Judd-Ofelt model from absorption cross-sections of all observable transitions.
Therefore, the 4I9/2 radiative quantum efficiency was estimated at 67 %. The emission cross-section was 2.6x10-21 cm2 at
4.6 &mgr;m obtained by Fütchbauer-Ladenburg theory. The product of measured lifetime and emission cross-section for 4I9/2
-> 4I11/2 transition is about 1.87x10-24 cm2.s is comparable with that for GaLaS glasses. The fiber drawing of the Er3+
doped Ge20Ga5Sb10S65 glasses and measurements of optical losses in mid-IR are currently in progress and first results
were presented.
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