erbium doped fiber amplifiers principles and applications

Erbium doped fiber amplifiers principles :

EDFA stands for erbium doped fiber amplifier, An optical amplifier are also called erbium doped fiber amplifier or EDFA. This article also gives you  advantages and disadvantages of EDFA to know more details about EDFA.

The erbium atoms in silica are Er³⁺ ions with three lost electrons in its orbit. The raising of ions to higher energy levels is achieved by two pump level.

1. Meta stable state :

The meta stable state is a state from which the life time for the transitions from this state to the ground state are very long compared with the life times to the states that led to this level. 

 2. Stark splitting :

The meta stable, the pump band state and ground state levels are closely spaced energy levels form the manifold called stark splitting.

Erbium doped fiber amplifiers applications :

• Erbium doped is a double clad fibers can be used for generating very high output power of tens of watts or even more.
• It is also possible to amplify ultra short pulses in the 1.5 micro meter region to relatively high energies using EDFAs in the form of amplifier chains
• As a pump absorption efficiency can be weak in this case, an ytterbium sensitized core may again be useful.
• One exploits the relatively high saturation energy of such amplifier, particularly when erbium doped large mode area fibers.
• For proper choice of material composition of the fiber core this energy transfer can be fairly efficient.
• The use of pure erbium doped fibers is more common in the telecom area side.