NONDESTRUCTIVE METHOD FOR MEASURING THE DEGREE OF CLUSTER-INDUCED QUENCHING IN ER3-DOPED WAVE-GUIDES AND FIBERS()

Ion clustering is one of the major dissipative processes in the operat ion of Er3+-doped planar waveguide amplifiers and heavily doped fiber amplifiers. We propose and demonstrate a nondestructive method for mea suring the fraction of erbium ions in doped planar waveguides and fibe rs that are quenched by ultrafast parasitic energy transfer in ion pai rs or clusters. The method is based on unsaturable absorption measurem ents in the 980-nm absorption band. By combining transmission data at resonance with the corresponding data for radiation outside the absorp tion band, the influence of background and coupling losses can be elim inated. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.