Design and fabrication of erbium doped photosensitive fibers

A kind of erbium doped photosensitive fiber (EDPF) was proposed and fabricated, whose core was made of double layers named photosensitive layer and erbium doped layer. The double-layer core design can overcome difficulties in fabrication of EDPF with single core design, i.e. the conflict between the high consistency rare earth doping and high consistency germanium doping. A sample was fabricated through the modified chemical vapor deposition method combined with solution doping technique. The peak absorption coefficient was 48.80 dB/m at 1.53 μm, the background loss was lower than 0.1 dB/m, and the reflectivity of the fiber Brag gratings (FBG) written directly on the sample fiber was up to 97.3% by UV-writing technology. Moreover, a C band tunable fiber laser was fabricated using the sample fiber, in which a uniform FBG was written directly on EDPFs as a reflector. A single wavelength lasing with a maximum wavelength tuning range of 1555.2–1558.0 nm was achieved experimentally. Within this tuning range, the full-width at half maximum (FWHM) of the laser output was smaller than 0.015 nm and the side mode suppression ratio (SMSR) was better than 50 dB.