S.M. Riecke^a, K. Lauritsen^a, H. Thiem^b, K. Paschke^b, and R. Erdmann^a

Published in:

Proc. SPIE, vol. 7212, no. 72120O (2009).

Abstract:

In this paper, we compare two amplifier technologies, an ytterbium-doped fiber, and a semiconductor taper, regarding their suitability to amplify sub-100 ps pulses. With both setups, we obtain amplification of the pulse energy by more than 10 dB. However, suppression of self-lasing in the pulse intervals is critical, particularly in the case of the semiconductor amplifier which has a very short upper state lifetime. The seed pulses were generated by a gain-switched distributed feedback (DFB) laser at arbitrary repetition rates. They have widths of below 100 ps FWHM, pulse energies of over 100 pJ and a peak power of over 700mW. This makes them very suitable for optical amplification. With the fiber amplifier, the pulse form remained unchanged, while with the semiconductor amplifier, it broadened slightly. With both amplifiers, pulse peak powers of over 8W were obtained, which represents an amplification by more than 10 dB.

Keywords:

optical amplification, DFB laser, picosecond pulses, Yb-doped fiber amplifier, semiconductor tapered amplifier, semiconductor optical amplifier, gain-switching

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