Measurement technique for pump and signal background absorption of erbium doped fibres [reply]

The measurement technique described in the original article [see ibid., vol. 31, p. 1866-7 (1996)] determines an effective absorption constant α_eff summarising all nonsaturable absorption effects as fibre background absorption, pair induced quenching, and excited state absorption. We have shown that α_eff) is very well suited for a comparison between theory and experiment for erbium doped fibre amplifiers. No further information about the relative strength of each effect is needed