Baria-Silica Erbium-Doped Fibers for Extended L-Band Amplification

We present baria-silica erbium-doped fibers (Ba-EDF) for extending the bandwidth of L-band EDFAs beyond 1620 nm. Using a combination of modified chemical vapor deposition (MCVD) process and solution-doping technique, we demonstrate low loss (<10 dB/km at 1200 nm) fiber cores with BaO concentration of 1-3 mol% and Er3+ concentration of 8x10(24) m(-3). We show that the optical properties and EDFA performance are positively affected by increasing the BaO content. Namely, when we increase the BaO concentration from 1.3 to 3 mol%, we observe a reduction of pair-induced quenching that correlates with a bi-exponential luminescence decay with a dominant 15.5 ms lifetime component. Furthermore, the slight modifications of absorption/ emission coefficients point to a red-shift of the signal excited state absorption and consequently, to a moderate extension of the L-band gain to longer wavelengths (1622 nm).