Novel Er:Yb phosphate glass fiber laser pumped by a 946 nm Nd:YAG laser

Summary form only given. Recently, Kigre introduced a new family of rare-earth doped fibers (Wu et al, 2000), based on phosphate laser glass. Due to their phonon energy, erbium-doped phosphate glasses exhibit lower up-conversion losses than silica glass. This, and the high solubility for rare-earth ions, makes phosphate glasses promising candidates for high-gain erbium devices. High doping concentrations enable short devices, and fiber lasers or amplifiers with only a few centimeters of active fiber can be realized. This is to be compared to standard EDFAs that normally contain tens of meters of erbium-doped silica fibers. We have demonstrated a short fiber-laser based on a single-mode Er:Yb codoped phosphate fiber, pumped by a 946 nm Nd:YAG laser.