Photodarkening in ytterbium-doped silica fibers

J. J. Koponen; M. J. Söderlund; S. K. T. Tammela; H. Po

doi:10.1117/12.630499

28 October 2005 Photodarkening in ytterbium-doped silica fibers

J. J. Koponen, M. J. Söderlund, S. K. T. Tammela, H. Po

Proceedings Volume 5990, Optically Based Materials and Optically Based Biological and Chemical Sensing for Defence II; 599008 (2005) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.630499
Event: European Symposium on Optics and Photonics for Defence and Security, 2005, Bruges, Belgium

Abstract

Ytterbium-doped fibers are widely used in applications requiring short fiber amplifiers for high peak power pulse amplification. One of the key challenges posed on the performance and reliability of such amplifiers is mitigating photodarkening of the active fiber. Photodarkening manifests itself as a temporal increase in broadband absorption centered at visible wavelengths, and varies on how the active fiber has been manufactured. The tail of the photodarkening absorption extends to the 1μm region, thus in some cases seriously degrading the fiber efficiency over time. Accurate measurement methods for characterization of photodarkening must be developed in order to better understand its causes and create techniques to eliminate it so as to secure widespread commercialization of reliable Yb-doped fibers. This paper presents a simple method to characterize photodarkening in both single-mode and double clad Yb-doped fibers. A short length of fiber is pumped using high brightness source in order to achieve high and uniform inversion. The high inversion speeds up the formation of the color centers to the high degradation level, thus reducing the analyzing time from weeks to few of hours. With this method, photodarkening can be measured even from relatively short fibers by monitoring loss at visible wavelengths, where the degradation is greatest. We have analyzed the repeatability of the measurement method against the pumping conditions and fiber sample properties. The impact of photodarkening in different applications is discussed. We present the results of recent optimization of Liekki Yb1200 product family and also compare these with some other commercially available fibers.

Citation Download Citation

J. J. Koponen, M. J. Söderlund, S. K. T. Tammela, and H. Po "Photodarkening in ytterbium-doped silica fibers", Proc. SPIE 5990, Optically Based Materials and Optically Based Biological and Chemical Sensing for Defence II, 599008 (28 October 2005); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.630499

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