AMPLIFYING 4-WAVELENGTH COMBINER, BASED ON ERBIUM YTTERBIUM-DOPED WAVE-GUIDE AMPLIFIERS AND INTEGRATED SPLITTERS/

We report the successful system demonstration of a four-wavelength int egrated-optics amplifying combiner. The arrangement consists of an all -connectorized 4 x 1 glass splitter followed by a 4.5-cm-long Er/Yb-do ped waveguide amplifier. When injecting 120 mW of 975-nm laser diode p ump, we record, in the amplifying section, 11.6 dB of net gain in sing le pass configuration and 23 dB in double pass as well as a noise figu re of 4.5 dB. These results show the potentiality of ion-exchange tech nology for the fabrication of lossless telecommunication devices.