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This paper reports on transient processes and cross talk (cross modulation) in an O-band (1260 – 1360 nm) bismuth-doped phosphosilicate fibre amplifier. Times characterising dynamic parameters of the amplifier at a pump wavelength of 1.23 μm have been determined experimentally. Data have been obtained on the effect of the modulation frequency Ω of one of the channels in the range 10 Hz to 1 MHz on the cross-talk intensity in another channel. The data, in combination with numerical calculation results, show that the cross talk in the Bi-doped fibre amplifier is insignificant at modulation frequencies Ω above 100 kHz. Our results demonstrate that O-band Bi-doped fibre amplifiers are potentially attractive for practical application in multichannel high-speed data transmission systems.

Bismuth-doped fibers (BDFs) are considered nowadays as an essential part of the development of novel optical amplifiers, which can provide a significant upgrade to existing fiber optic telecommunication systems, securing multiband data transmission. In this paper, a series of BDF amplifiers (BDFAs) for O-, E-, and S-telecom bands based on a cladding pumping scheme using low-cost multimode semiconductor laser diodes at a wavelength of 0.7–0.8 µm were demonstrated for, it is understood, the first time. The developed BDFAs are characterized by a high peak gain of >25–30 dB in the corresponding telecom bands and a relatively low noise figure of 5–6 dB. Comparative analysis shows that most of the parameters of cladding pumped BDFAs are close to those of the best core pumped ones. This research opens up new opportunities for utilizing Bi-doped fibers as a key element of cost-effective and ready-to-work BDFAs for various practical applications.

In this article, we describe the technology for manufacturing of the phosphosilicate bismuth-doped optical fibers providing optical amplification near 1.32 $\mu$ m. The effect of preforming sintering process and fiber drawing on the optical properties of the fabricated fibers were studied. We showed that an increase in the vitrification temperature of the P-doped silica glass soot layers deposed on the inner surface of a fused silica tube from 1850 to $\mathbf {\sim \text{2000}}$ °C (while keeping other parameters unchanged) provides a noticeable reduction of the unsaturable losses. We also found that the fiber drawing speed significantly affects the optical properties of bismuth-doped fibers. In particular, an increase in the drawing speed from $\sim$ 1 to $\sim$ 80 m/min led to a decrease of both active absorption and unsaturable losses, while the ratio of active absorption to unsaturable losses became greater. As a result, the laser efficiency of the bismuth-doped fibers grew two-fold from 19.5% to 37%.

We have studied polarised luminescence of bismuth active centres in germanosilicate glasses. The 1.4-μm luminescence components with orthogonal polarisation states under excitation with linearly polarised light at λ = 1.26 μm have been shown to differ in intensity. The degree of polarisation reaches ∼0.12. Increasing the concentration of bismuth active centres leads to a decrease in the degree of polarisation of luminescence in the range studied.

For the first time, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, a cladding-pumped bismuth-doped fiber laser (BDFL) is demonstrated. A “home-made” Bi-doped germanosilicate fiber with a 125 µm circular outer cladding made of fused silica and coated by a low refractive index polymer is used as an active medium pumped by commercial multimode laser diodes with a total output power of 25 W at 808 nm. We find that the BDFL with a free-running cavity (when feedback is provided by ≈4% back reflection from two bare right-angle cleaved fiber ends) composed of a 100-m-long bismuth-doped fiber is capable of emitting at a wavelength of 1440 nm. A slope efficiency of 0.5% with respect to the absorbed pump power with a maximum output power of ≈50 mW is obtained in a BDFL with a cavity formed by a highly reflective Bragg grating at 1461 nm and a right-angle cleaved fiber end. The beam quality factors (M2) of the output BDFL in the horizontal and vertical directions are measured to be 1.18 and 1.13, respectively. The processes affecting the efficiency of the BDFLs are also discussed. The possible improvements for the output power scaling and increasing the efficiency of the cladding-pumped BDFLs are proposed.

This paper presents a study of the properties of erbium-doped optical fibres with enhanced gamma-ray resistance at a high dose rate. The fibres have a silica core containing different dopants. The gamma-ray resistance of the fibres is due to additional doping of their core with cerium and germanium ions, as well as to aluminium concentration optimisation. We assess the effect of fibre composition on the radiation-induced loss at a wavelength of 1310 nm and the output power and weighted average wavelength of superluminescent fibre sources based on erbium-doped fibre under pulsed gamma irradiation (dose per pulse, ∼ 20 Gy). The fibre doped with aluminium, germanium and cerium oxides is shown to be optimal for use in gamma-ray-resistant broadband superluminescent fibre sources.

We report on, to the best of our knowledge, the first Q-switched bismuth-doped fiber laser operating at ${\sim }1.3~\mu \mathrm {m}$ . An acousto-optic modulator (AOM)-based active Q-switching was realized in a ring cavity with a bismuth-doped phosphosilicate fiber as an active medium. Stable pulsing in the range from 1310 to 1350 nm was achieved using various fiber Bragg gratings. The dependence of the laser operation on the unsaturable loss of the active fiber was studied. Optimization of the scheme and selection of an appropriate bismuth-doped fiber provided maximum pulse energy of ${\sim }11.5~\mu \mathrm {J}$ at the output of the laser. Using the data obtained, the evaluation of the extractable energy and the concentration of the bismuth active centers in the fiber samples under investigation was performed.

This paper presents a study of anti-Stokes luminescence in optical fibres with a bismuth-doped ~50%GeO2 – 50%SiO2 glass core under IR excitation. The anti-Stokes luminescence intensity has been measured as a function of temperature in the range 77 – 300 K. From these data, we have evaluated the activation energy for the thermal quenching of anti-Stokes luminescence in the visible and IR spectral regions. A mechanism of anti-Stokes luminescence in this type of optical fibre has been proposed.

We present highly efficient b ismuth-doped fi ber am plifier cov ering almost all O- and E-bands. Using 250 mW single wavelength pumping at 1256 nm and low OH bismuth-doped fiber, we managed to achieve 26dB peak gain with -3dB bandwidth of 116 nm.

We present a wideband fiber amplifier with a flat gain spectrum ranging from 1306 to 1441 nm at a 3 dB level from maximum of 26 dB based on bismuth-doped active fibers with phosphosilicate and germanosilicate glass core. Combination of pumping at 1180 nm and gain clamping at 1280 nm was used to achieve a wider gain spectrum.

We report experimental results and numerical calculations regarding the stability of laser-active bismuth-related centers in Bi-doped GeO 2 –SiO 2 glass fibers to laser radiation at 1550 nm (at different temperatures).

For the first time, we fabricated and studied optical characteristics of a bend-insensitive bismuth-doped P 2 O 5 – SiO 2 glass core fiber operating in a spectral region of 1.3 – 1.4 µm having a depressed cladding design.

In this paper, we performed numerical and experimental study of the stability of bismuth-doped high-GeO2 glass core fiber used as an active medium in lasers operating in the wavelength region 1600 - 1800 nm. Mainly, we focus on the investigation of the joint effects of temperature and pumping radiation on the spectroscopic and laser characteristics of the fibers. Temporal evolution of the degradation of bismuth-related active centers (BACs) under pumping at 1550 nm, as well as the annealing of the fibers at temperature ranging from 300 to 550 °C was experimentally revealed and studied. A model describing the photochemical processes of the transformation of the BACs at different ambient conditions was proposed and used to make a long-term prediction of the dynamics of the process. The ability to simulate the long-term behavior of the medium might be instrumental since direct measurements are time consuming and therefore impractical. In addition, we performed numerical simulation to find out how the effect of photoinduced degradation of BACs affects the performance of a laser based on this type of fibers.

We present the absorption spectra of bismuth active centers associated with phosphorus obtained experimentally. The results showed that the peak values are ~2.5 ±0.4 pm2 and weakly depend on the active centers concentration.

Using a bismuth-doped aluminosilicate fibre laser tunable in the range 1130–1210 nm, we have examined the effect of pump wavelength on the gain spectrum of bismuth-doped phosphosilicate fibres in the range 1220–1400 nm. At a pump wavelength of 1195 nm, we obtained a peak gain wavelength of 1300 nm, which is near the centre of the standard range for O-band transmission (1270–1320 nm) in fibre-optic communication links, in particular between data centres. Using a bismuth-doped phosphosilicate fibre amplifier pumped at 1195 nm, we have demonstrated that the transmission distance for a signal from a semiconductor laser diode directly modulated at 25 Gb s−1 [on – off keying (OOK) modulation] can be increased for G.652 fibre from the standard 10 to 80 km or even more.

We report on a new record in the field of broadband BDFA in the O+E spectral range. Using only 250 mW single wavelength pump at 1256 nm and a low-OH bismuth-doped fiber containing two types of bismuth active centers, we achieved >23 dB gain from 1325 nm to 1441 nm with flatness

Performance characteristics of superluminescent fiber source (SFS) operating at 1.73 μ m under different temperature conditions and gamma-irradiation of active fiber were studied. The SFS in a single-pass and backward pumping configuration was constructed using a bismuth-doped high-germania silicate fiber. The output parameters of the SFS including output power, spectral shape, mean wavelength, full width at half maximum, and peak position were measured in the temperature range from –60 to +60 °C. The simulation of the bismuth SFS at room temperature was performed for the first time to our knowledge. The simulation was also used for theoretical study of the SFS performance under gamma-irradiation. The obtained results of calculation are in good agreement with the experimental data. The effect of gamma-radiation exposure (60Co source) of active fiber on the SFS output power was investigated at different temperatures. The output power as a function of radiation dose is presented. No photobleaching of radiation induced absorption in bismuth doped fibers by pump light at 1550 nm was observed.

We report a recently discovered effect of enhancement of the luminescence intensity in bismuth-doped high-germania-core glass fibers as a consequence of heat treatment. Analyzing the experimental results, it was shown that an increase of the luminescence intensity is caused by a thermally induced growth of the bismuth-related active centers (BACs) concentration. The activation energies of formation of the thermally induced bismuth-related active centers and other complexes responsible for unsaturable loss were estimated. It was found that there are major parameters, such as total Bi content, heating temperature, which affect significantly the increment of the BACs concentration. In addition, the gain and lasing characteristics of the bismuth-doped GeO 2 -SiO 2 glass fibers in which a part of the BACs was induced by thermal treatment were studied.

We developed a simple silica-based BDFA with 80nm 6-dB gain-bandwidth flexibly centred within 1305–1325nm, and parameters comparable to EDFAs. The amplifier can extend 400GBASE-LR8 transmission (8×26.6 Gbaud/s PAM-4 channels) beyond 50 km of G.652 fiber.

Operation of single-stage, single-pump E-band bismuth-doped fibre amplifier with gain, noise figure and efficiency comparable to the state-of-the-art erbium-doped fibre amplifier of the same complexity and the gain bandwidth of 50 nm is demonstrated. The amplification of 10 Gbit/s intensity modulation/direct detection signal with power penalty below 1.5 dB is reported.

The destruction of laser-active centers in bismuth-doped phosphosilicate fibers exposed to laser light at 532 nm and 1240 nm during annealing at 300 – 600 °C was demonstrated. Both laser radiations were shown to facilitate bleaching of the bismuth-related active centers (BACs), although the rate of this process for 1240 nm is noticeably slower than that of the 532 nm. A phenomenological model including optical excitation processes and thermally activated conversion through a first-order reaction is presented to describe the joint impact of thermal and laser-light treatment. The proposed model is consistent with our experimental data on bleaching and allows us to determine some parameters inherent to the studied process. We demonstrate that the time behavior of the BACs destruction induced with different laser light is characterized by different activation energies. The possible underlying mechanism of the bleaching is discussed taking into account the structural features of phosphosilicate glass.

We have studied the luminescence properties of optical fibres with a bismuth-doped alumino- and phosphosilicate glass core under two-step excitation and obtained new experimental data on the properties of luminescence centres in such fibres.

Determination of the active centers distribution across the fiber core as well as calculation of absorption cross sections is a challenging task for all types of bismuth-doped fibers. This is due to the low concentration of active centers and the ability of the bismuth ions to form various centers in silica-based glasses. In this work, we demonstrate the results of experimental measurement of radial distribution of bismuth active centers associated with phosphorus in fiber core using the luminescence spectroscopy. The shape of the distribution turned out to have prominent reduction of the active centers in the middle of the core. With these data, absorption cross section spectra were calculated by two methods. Both approaches demonstrated close values of absorption cross sections regardless the bismuth concentration and fiber geometry. The maximum of the absorption cross section was found to be 2.1 ± 0.3 pm2.

For the first time, we report on the fabrication of a bend-insensitive single-mode bismuth (Bi)-doped P 2 O 5 − S i O 2 fiber having a depressed cladding design and study its gain characteristics at a spectral region of 1.3–1.4 µm. It was shown that the obtained Bi-doped fiber can efficiently operate in the spectral band even at a bend radius of 1.5 cm. In addition, it was shown that this type of fiber has a smaller mode-field diameter in comparison with a step-index single-mode Bi-doped P 2 O 5 − S i O 2 fiber with Δ n ≈ 0.006 that resulted in a decrease of saturation power and, as a consequence, in a reduction of the total pump power required to a high-level-gain operation. The laser and gain experiments show the possibility of the construction of a compact high-performance optical amplifier for O-band based on the depressed-cladding Bi-doped fiber.

Bismuth-doped fiber is a promising active media for pulsed lasers operating in various spectral regions. In this paper, we report on a picosecond mode-locked laser at a wavelength of 1.32 μm, based on a phosphosilicate fiber doped with bismuth. Stable self-starting generation of dissipative solitons, using single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) as a saturable absorber, was achieved. Evolution of the pulsed regime, depending on pump power, and stability of the pulsing were investigated.

The effect of laser and thermal annealing on the gain characteristics of bismuth-doped optical fibers was studied. Net gain enhancement in a wavelength region of $1.6-1.8\ \mu m$ in Bi-doped germanosilicate fibers after laser or/and thermal treatment was revealed.

We report the results on lasing features in annealed bismuth-doped optical fibers. It was found that the annealed fibers present better lasing properties than the pristine ones which contain similar amount of the bismuth active centers associated with germanium.

Stable self-starting bismuth-doped fiber laser mode-locked by polymer-free singlewalled carbon nanotubes is described. Dissipative solitons as short as 7.8 ps and energy of ~110 pJ was obtained. Evolution of pulsed regime on pump power is presented.

The laser performance at the wavelength 1700 nm with a slope efficiency of 18% has been demonstrated using a 8.5-m long bismuth-doped fiber containing thermally induced active centers.

Using bismuth/erbium-doped optical fibre, we have fabricated the first optical amplifier with a gain of in a wide spectral range , which covers the C-, L- and U-bands.

We have demonstrated the first superluminescent IR source based on bismuth-doped high-germania fibre. Its main output characteristics are as follows: centre wavelength, ; emission bandwidth, at an output power of ; optical efficiency, .

We report the first bismuth-doped fibre amplifier operating between 1600 and 1800 nm, which utilises bidirectional pumping (co-propagating and counter-propagating pump beams) by laser diodes at a wavelength of 1550 nm. The largest gain coefficient of the amplifier is 23 dB, at a wavelength of 1710 nm. It has a noise figure of 7 dB, 3-dB gain bandwidth of 40 nm and gain efficiency of 0.1 dB mW-1.

The temperature dependencies of the characteristics of a bismuth-doped fiber amplifier (BDFA) for a 1725-nm band have been studied. The amplifier was backward-pumped with an Er-Yb-codoped fiber laser at 1568 nm. A peak gain of 24 dB, a 3-dB gain bandwidth of 55 nm, a noise figure of 5 dB and slope gain efficiency of 0.17 dB/mW at room temperature have been obtained. It has been shown that peak gain of the BDFA varies by 25 % in the temperature range from −60 to +60 °C while the noise figure remains almost unchanged. Some possible mechanisms responsible for the thermal behavior of the characteristics of the BDFA are considered.

An all-fiber ultrafast dissipative soliton laser at 1.3 microns based on phoshosilicate fiber doped with bismuth is presented. A nonlinear optical loop mirror containing high-germanium fiber with high nonlinearity and large positive dispersion was used. The scheme yields 11.3 ps pulses with energy of 1.7 nJ at repetition rate of 3.5 MHz. By means of bismuth-doped fiber amplifier and diffraction gratings compressor, the pulses were amplified up to 8.5nJ and compressed down to 530 fs. To achieve best results the optimal bismuth active fiber was chosen according to the investigated dependence of the gain coefficient on bismuth active centers concentration in phosphosilicate fibers.

We report the first demonstration of optical amplifier based on bismuth- and erbium-codoped germanosilicate fibers. The 15-dB small-signal gain window covers a 260-nm band by using a single-wavelength pumping at 1460 nm.

We present figure-of-eight picosecond bismuth laser operating at 1.7 μm. Stable pulses as short as 21 ps were obtained. The MOPA setup yielded pulses with average power of 20 mW and pulse energy of 5.7 nJ.