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Fiber Gratings in Lasers and Ampliers

Jean-Luc Archambault and Stephen G. Grubb (Invited Paper)

Abstract The emergence of UV-written ber gratings, both short and long period, as a reliable ber technology has revolutionized the eld of active ber devices. The advantageous properties of spectral selectivity, low insertion loss, and component ruggedness have made devices possible that would not be viable without their use. The use of ber gratings in conjunction with erbium-doped ber ampliers (EDFAs), ber lasers, and with semiconductor diode lasers is reviewed. Index Terms Fiber ampliers, ber Bragg gratings (FBGs), ber gratings, ber lasers.

temperatures to telecommunications standards [2] has enabled ber systems designers to use these important ber tools to solve practical problems. Indeed, ber Bragg gratings are becoming an integral part of ber system performance. II. FIBER GRATINGS IN ACTIVE FIBER DEVICES A. Fiber Gratings in Erbium-Doped Fiber Ampliers The development of erbium-doped ber ampliers has revolutionized the eld of communications over the past several years. The capacity of systems demonstrations has increased from the Gb/s range to the Tb/s range, as a direct result of the development of the EDFA and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology. Fiber Bragg technology has complemented EDFA performance extremely well over the past several years, in the areas of pump laser wavelength stabilization, pump reectors, and gain wavelength attening ber gratings. Fiber Bragg gratings have now established themselves as an integral part of EDFA systems performance. As a result of the three-level nature of the erbium-doped ber amplier, there, by necessity, needs to be a certain amount of excess pump power exiting the other end of the erbium-doped ber in order to maintain a reasonable amount of population inversion in the gain medium. This is especially true when a counterpropagating amplier conguration is used for optimum power conversion efciency as the noise gure of the amplier is critically dependent on the amount of pump power at the input to the amplier. It is thus advantageous to use a broad, highly reecting ber grating in order to double pass the pump light in the amplier, thereby increasing the overall efciency of the amplier. The overlap of the ber Bragg grating spectrum with the pump diode spectrum has necessitated the use of very broad ber Bragg gratings which in turn has required the use of highly photosensitive bers. Hydrogen sensitization of highly germania-doped ber has enabled the fabrication of very broadband gratings [3]. These gratings have index changes as large as 0.02, comparable to the core/clad index difference. These strong gratings can be used to improve the performance of optically-amplied communications systems by reecting the unused 1480 or 980-nm-pump power back through the amplier. The spectral output of 1480-nm-pump sources is very broad, 1525 nm, so a high bandwidth reector is required. Using a highly germania-doped ber and hydrogen loading, a 23 nm FWHM grating was fabricated [4]. As expected, splicing the pump reector grating in after the EDF increases the average inversion over the Er3+ ber,

I. INTRODUCTION HE recent availability of UV-written ber gratings [1] has resulted in a variety of important technological advances in ber-based devices and systems. Fiber gratings have now become an enabling technology that provides convenient, cost-effective, and reliable solutions to a multitude of design problems in ber systems, whether they are used for optical feedback, wavelength control, ltering, sensing, or as dispersive elements. Fiber grating technology has had a particularly strong impact on the design of active devices, such as ber lasers, ber ampliers, and laser diodes, by enabling the fabrication of highly spectrally selective feedback elements directly into the ber core leading to extremely low loss resonators, something no alternative technology can provide. The development of the long-period ber grating, which couples discrete wavelengths into lossy cladding modes, with extremely low levels of backreection, gave active ber device developers another important tool in the design of active ber devices. The two complementary technologiesshort and long-period ber gratingscan be combined to fabricate active ber devices which would otherwise be hard to envision. In this paper, we present an overview of the important role of ber gratings in the design and performance of lasers and ampliers. In erbium-doped ber ampliers (EDFAs), for example, ber grating technology is providing practical solutions to a variety of important problems, such as gain-attening, pump diode reection and stabilization. Other devices, such as external cavity laser diodes, rare-earth-doped ber lasers, Raman lasers and ampliers, which at some point may have been thought impractical, are now rapidly turning into commercially viable technologies. Conrmation that ber Bragg gratings are indeed thermally robust over typical operating
Manuscript received April 4, 1997; revised May 14, 1997. J.-L. Archambault was with SDL Inc., San Jose, CA 95134 USA. He is now with Ciena Corporation, Linthicum, MD 21090 USA. S. G. Grubb is with SDL Inc., San Jose, CA 95134 USA. Publisher Item Identier S 0733-8724(97)05947-1.

07338724/97$10.00 1997 IEEE

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and uses the pump light more efciently, resulting on the order of 1 dB of gain and noise gure improvement. This improvement translates directly into increased system margin. Pump reector gratings are also used in 980 nm pumped ampliers. The spectrum of a typical 1480 nm pump reector grating, shown both in transmission and reection, is shown in Fig. 1. What is not immediately obvious from the reection spectrum of a strong grating is that there are additional features that present a design challenge for more complicated devices. These are apparent, however, in the transmission spectrum. Coupling to backward-propagating and cladding modes in the ber results in a large loss on the short wavelength side of the grating. The gap between the Bragg wavelength, , and the longest wavelength at which light can couple to the cladding, , results from wavevector matching requirements as the grating starts to grow [5] and is a function of the ber effective index, and the index of the cladding, (1)

(a)

Use of high ber can widen the gap, pushing the loss to even shorter wavelengths. This loss can be further reduced by increasing the grating-mode overlap by either increasing the mode connement in the core or using a ber with Ge in the cladding to write a grating across the entire mode [6]. Another undesirable aspect of the grating transmission spectrum are the features on the short wavelength edge: these are FabryPerot oscillations. Because the Bragg wavelength is slightly shorter in the wings than at the peak of the grating, a resonant cavity is created. The difference in Bragg wavelength is due to a difference in average index that is a consequence of the Gaussian spatial prole laser beam that is used to write the grating. This problem can be solved by using a strongly chirped grating. This is a grating in which the period varies monotonically over the length of the grating. The chirp rate is characterized by the change in period per unit length of the grating. The challenge is in generating the desired chirp. A linearly chirped grating made with different cylindrical lenses in each of the arms of the interferometer was used to achieve a very broad, 44-nm-wide grating, which was used as a pump reector grating in a 1480-nm-pumped Er3+ ber amplier [7]. Such broad gratings are also quite lossy at both the signal and pump wavelengths, and hence this offsets some of the benet of the pump reector grating. With the emergence of WDM systems, attening of the EDFA gain spectrum to increase the usable bandwidth is of critical importance. This was rst accomplished using tilted Bragg gratings that couple the guided modes out into the cladding [8]. Originally intended for wavelength-selective taps, a series of such tilted gratings (approximately 6 from normal) has been used to add wavelength-selective loss to an amplier, signicantly reducing the variation in the gain. Two disadvantages of tilted ber Bragg gratings are the increase difculty of fabrication and their relatively high degree of backreection. The backreection issue is an especially serious one when this element is located within a high gain amplier.

(b) Fig. 1. A 1480-nm-pump reector ber Bragg grating in reection and transmission.

Another approach to this problem is to use long period ber gratings [9], [10]. These are gratings with periods of tens to hundreds of micrometers. Unlike ber Bragg gratings that reect light back down the ber, long period gratings scatter the light forward into cladding modes, where it is lost. As a 80 dB). result, they have extremely low back reections ( In addition, they are easy to fabricate with an amplitude mask or by scanning a slit in front of a UV beam. The resonance of long period gratings depends on the difference in propagation constants between core and cladding modes. Because cladding modes are strongly effected by bending of the ber, long period gratings are bend sensitive and must be packaged carefully. However, it is possible to tailor the characteristics to closely resemble the inverse of the EDFA gain spectrum. One of the initial problems rst encountered with long period ber gratings was the nearly order of magnitude increased temperature dependence of the wavelength shift compared to short period gratings. This problem has been essentially completely eliminated by the use of a special ber waveguide design that gives an opposite temperature dependence for the core and cladding modes thus making these gratings nearly temperature insensitive [11].

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Long-period gratings have already proven their impact on erbium amplier gain attening performance in systems experiments. Long period ber gratings have been successfully used in a 9000-km-loop experiment in order to increase the usable bandwidth of the erbium amplier cascade [12]. A very elegant long-period grating lter, based on the combination of three separate long-period gratings, was used to demonstrate a gain attened wavelength response of over 40 nm using conventional silica erbium-doped bers [13]. Long period gratings have also been used in a 32 10 Gb/s WDM transmission experiment over 640 km using silica based erbium ber ampliers [14]. Previously this performance was demonstrated only with uoride EDFAs. The bandwidth of the long period grating attened silica ampliers (35 nm) was also signicantly broader than uoride ber based erbium ampliers (25 nm). The existence of wideband, gain attened optical ampliers are becoming increasingly critical to WDM systems performance. Long period gratings are becoming increasingly important in applications such as gain-attened ber ampliers, and may well rival short-period ber Bragg gratings in their importance in commercial devices. B. Single-Mode Fiber Lasers A promising alternative to DFB or DBR semiconductor lasers, beside ber grating-stabilized laser diodes (see Section III), is the short-cavity ber laser. The introduction of ber gratings has greatly simplied the design of singlelongitudinal-mode ber lasers by reducing the number of required components to a minimum. Short, monolithic, diodepumped FabryPerot laser cavities can be built using of a short section (a few centimeters) of rare-earth-doped ber with a ber grating at each end [15][26]. Alternatively, robust single-mode operation can be obtained with a single phase-shifted grating written over the full length of the rareearth doped ber, a conguration similar to that of a DFB laser diode [27][33]. Single-mode ber lasers have been shown to achieve high output powers, narrow linewidths, low-noise, and excellent wavelength stability and accuracy. They can also be continuously tuned in wavelength simply by stretching or compressing the ber cavity [16], [23]. The laser does not mode-hop when it is strain-tuned, simply because the cavity modes shift in wavelength at the exact same rate as the reection spectrum of the ber gratings. Compression-tuning can result in a large tuning range as silica bers are much stronger in compression than in extension. Tuning over more than 40 nm has been demonstrated in this way [23]. Erbium-doped ber lasers have received a lot of attention because of their obvious compatibility with 1.55 mbased telecommunications systems. Erbium ber lasers can be pumped by 980 or 1480 nm laser diodes and can lase over much of the erbium gain band. Erbium bers, however, are not well suited for designing single-mode lasers because of their relatively low pump absorption per unit length. Compared to other rare-earths, erbium ions have relatively low absorption cross-sections at the usual pump wavelengths and they can only be incorporated in silica bers at low concentrations to avoid problems due to clustering and ion pair interactions. In

(a)

(b)

(c) Fig. 2. Designs of high-power ( 5 mW) single-mode ber lasers at 1.55 m based on erbium (a) and erbium:ytterbium doped bers, (b) and (c).

>

the length of ber required for robust single-mode operation (normally less than 10 cm [17]) a typical erbium-doped ber is only able to absorb a few milliwatts of pump power which results in a 1.55 m output power of a fraction of a milliwatt. High output powers can however be obtained using a master-oscillator power-amplier (MOPA) conguration, which includes an EDFA section to absorb the residual pump power and boost the weak single-mode signal [see Fig. 2(a)] [21], [22]. An optical isolator must be included between the two sections to prevent backward amplied spontaneous emission from the amplier from destabilizing the oscillator. Diode-pumped MOPA ber lasers have achieved single-mode output powers in excess of 10 mW and have been successfully implemented in high bit rate transmission experiments [21]. Other approaches have also been proposed to improve the pumping efciency of single-mode erbium ber lasers. These include intracavity pumping within a 975 nm ytterbium ber laser [32] and pumping in the green, around 520 nm, where the absorption cross-section is approximately 20 times higher than at 980 nm [33]. More efcient 1.55 m single-mode lasers have been realized in bers co-doped with erbium and ytterbium [25][27]. Er:Yb bers are designed so that the ytterbium ions absorb most of the pump light and resonantly transfer the absorbed energy to erbium. As ytterbium does not suffer from the concentration-quenching problems of erbium and has a larger absorption cross section, it is possible to design bers that can absorb tens of milliwatts of pump power in just a few centimeters. Ytterbium co-doping also gives access to a much wider range of pump wavelengths, from about 900 nm up to 1070 nm, with the peak absorption around 975 nm. Early Er:Yb single-mode ber lasers were realized by splicing ber gratings to the ends of short sections (310 cm) of doped ber [Fig. 2(b)] [25], [26]. With simple FabryPerot cavities, lasing efciencies with respect to launched pump power were as high as 55% with single-mode output powers up to 19 mW at 1.54 m pumped by a 90 mW, 980 nm laser diode [26].

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Although Er:Yb bers are generally free of germania, it is possible to write strong ber gratings directly into the doped ber [34], which has lead to the demonstration a DFB ber laser [Fig. 2(c)] [27a]. An Er/Yb DFB ber laser with an output of 10 mW at a slope efciency of 11% has been constructed [27b]. In this very simple conguration, a single grating covers the entire gain region and single-mode operation is realized by introducing a optical phase-shift in the grating [27][30]. Phase-shifted DFB ber gratings have been produced by a few different techniques, including thermal gradient [27], post UV-exposure [30], [35] and a phasecontrolled beam-scanning approach [36]. Compared to more conventional FabryPerot laser cavities, DFB ber lasers offer better stability and stronger side-mode suppression. DFB ber lasers have more recently been realized in ytterbium-doped [29] and erbium-doped [30][33] bers with grating lengths of up to 10 cm. The noise spectrum of single-mode ber lasers is dominated by a relaxation-oscillation peak, usually at a few hundred kHz. This noise component can easily be eliminated with a suitable feedback circuit to the pump laser [20], [21], [24]. At frequencies in the MHz or GHz range, the noise level can be down to less than 150 dB/Hz [26] which is comparable to the noise of a DFB laser diode. An important issue with single-mode ber lasers is their polarization properties. Because optical bers usually exhibit a certain amount of linear birefringence, and ber gratings themselves are birefringent, ber lasers tend to operate over two distinct sets of modes with orthogonal linear polarization [21], [27]. The difference in optical frequencies between the two sets of modes is simply given by (2) where is the ber birefringence, and are the nominal optical frequency and mode index, respectively. As is usually around 10 6 10 5 , the polarization mode splitting is typically of a few hundred MHz [27], [28], [31]. It has been observed that, close to threshold, short cavity ber lasers operate mostly in a single polarization, which means that they are truly single-frequency [21]. At higher power, however, the lasers tend to operate in both polarizations, with an unequal distribution of power between the two polarization modes [27], [28], [31]. The ber laser then has a dual-frequency output, with a frequency separation . This can be a serious problem as any polarization mixing after the output of the laser causes beat noise to appear at the frequency . A rst solution to this problem is to design the ber laser to operate just above threshold; since one polarization usually experiences a slightly higher net gain than the other, this can easily force the laser to operate in a single-polarization [21]. The MOPA conguration described above is particularly well-suited for this approach. Another solution consists of introducing circular birefringence in the ber laser by twisting the ber [31]. It has been observed experimentally that, as more and more twists are applied to the ber, the polarization beat frequency is gradually reduced until it tends to zero. At the same time, one of the polarization modes is gradually

eliminated until the laser operates in a single polarization. A third possible solution is to use high-birefringence ber. It has in fact been shown that ber gratings written in certain highbirefringence ber exhibit a signicantly anisotropic reection efciency [37]. This effect has been used to increase the discrimination between the two orthogonal polarizations and force the laser into single-polarization output. Single-frequency ber lasers combine a number of unique features that make them an interesting alternative to highpower DFB laser diodes used for example in CATV transmission systems. These features include the wavelength accuracy and stability characteristic of ber gratings as well as low noise and high ber-coupled output power. Their very narrow linewidths, which can be down to about kilohertz, also makes them extremely attractive for ultrahigh-resolution interferometric sensing, as was recently demonstrated [38]. One important drawback is that they must be externally modulated, due to the long lifetimes of rare-earth ions. C. High-Power Cladding Pumped Fiber Lasers The output power of EDFAs has to date been limited only by the amount of single-mode coupled pump power that one has available for pumping into one of the many absorption bands of erbium-doped bers. The optical powers that are currently available from single-mode ber pigtailed laser diodes are on the order of 100 mW. These powers are limited by intrinsic materials properties of the laser diodes themselves (i.e., facet damage) and are not likely to be signicantly improved in the next ten years. Power scaling with single-stripe diode lasers can be achieved by doublepumping (co- and counterpropagating with respect to the signal) but effects such as pump laser diode crosstalk have to be considered and pump laser isolators may be required. Power scaling with discrete single-stripe lasers soon becomes a limitation in attempting to achieve high-power ber amplier devices [39]. Clearly, an approach that is capable of utilizing higher power pump laser diode arrays is arbitrarily power scaleable and where redundancy and power derating are design parameters is highly desirable. Cladding-pumped ber lasers have increased the amount of power available from single-mode bers by nearly two orders of magnitude over single stripe lasers. These cladding-pumped ber lasers are designed to have two distinct waveguiding regions, a large multimode guiding region for the diode pump light and a rare-earth-doped single-mode core from which the diffraction limited laser output is extracted. A schematic diagram of a high-power Yb3+ cladding-pumped ber laser is shown in Fig. 3. The diode laser pump is contained in a silica ( ) rectangular waveguiding region of dimensions 360 120 m, usually referred to as the pump cladding. The pump cladding region is typically surrounded by a low-index polymer ( ) giving a high numerical aperture pump region (NA ) into which to couple diode laser power. The low index polymer is coated with a second protective polymer coating. The Nd3+ or Yb3+ doped single-mode core is located at the center of the pump cladding. If the background losses of the pump cladding can be neglected, the only loss

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Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of cladding-pumped ber laser with intracore ber Bragg gratings.

mechanism of the pump light is when the rays occasionally cross the rare-earth doped single-mode core and are absorbed. When feedback elements, either dielectric coating or ber Bragg gratings, are present, all of the laser power can be extracted from the single-mode core. The most important property of the cladding-pumped ber laser is that a brightness conversion of highly nondiffraction limited diode laser arrays is obtained. The brightness increase is approximately given by the ratio of areas of the pump cladding to the single-mode core area, a value of 1500 in this example. Output powers of 5 W at slope efciencies of 51% have been obtained from diode-pumped Nd3+ cladding pumped ber lasers [40]. An output power of 9.2 W has recently been obtained from a diode-pumped Nd3+ cladding-pumped ber laser [41]. The slope efciency was only 25%, a direct result of using a circular geometry for the cladding-pumped structure and the resultant inefciency of pump light absorption by the single-mode core. The output spectra of cladding-pumped ber lasers is quite broad, emission over several tens of nms is possible in Yb3+ and Nd3+ ber lasers. The use of ber Bragg gratings has become necessary to narrow and stabilize the wavelength of these high power ber lasers. This is especially true when these ber lasers are used to pump high-power Er/Yb ampliers, where the wavelengths of the pumps must be maintained within the absorption of the Er/Yb ber bandwidth. Yb3+ -doped cladding pumped operation has recently been demonstrated with slope efciencies of 70% and output powers of 6.8 W [43]. Fiber lasers are now commercially available with single mode ber output powers of 9 W [44]. The feedback elements were ber Bragg gratings which were written in the innermost single-mode germania doped core. The wavelength of operation of the Yb3+ -cladding pumped ber laser was 1090 nm, where the Yb3+ laser behaves primarily as a four-level laser system. Yb3+ ions in glass

exhibit such a high degree of Stark splitting that laser operation has been obtained from 9751170 nm from the 2 F5/2 excited electronic state. Modeling of Yb3+ -doped cladding-pumped ber lasers shows that in the cladding-pumped geometry, laser operation should be readily obtained from 1050 to 1150 nm where the laser behaves primarily as a four-level or quasi- four-level laser system [45]. Fiber Bragg gratings are a necessary feedback element in attempting to extend the wavelength range of operation of cladding pumped ber lasers. Fiber MOPA structures were previously reported in singlemode erbium-doped ber lasers. It should be possible to extend the ber MOPA structure to cladding-pumped ber lasers, where the short oscillator was dened by two ber Bragg gratings [46]. The power scaling limitations of cladding-pumped ber lasers have not yet become apparent. A power limit of several tens of watts has been estimated [47]. Nonlinear effects rather than thermal effects will probably be the ultimate limiting mechanism. Stimulated Brillouin gain will probably not be the limiting nonlinearity due to the large number of longitudinal laser modes that are operational. It is much more likely that stimulated Raman scattering will be the ultimate limiting nonlinearity, with typical core proles and ber lengths of cladding pumped ber lasers that have been reported, a stimulated Raman threshold of around 40 W can be estimated [47]. The cladding-pumped ber laser power will most likely not be signicantly decreased but will be frequency converted by approximately 450 cm 1 . The future of cladding-pumped lasers will depend on new and efcient methods of coupling of high-power diode laser power into cladding-pumped bers. The development of higher brightness laser sources will also be important and will increase the efciency and wavelength range over which cladding-pumped ber laser operation is possible. The use of all ber Bragg feedback structures in

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Fig. 4. Schematic diagram of fth-order 1480-nm-cascaded Raman ber laser.

cladding-pumped ber lasers will increase both the wavelegnth range and efciency available from these high-power ber lasers. High-power cladding-pumped ber laser operation with ber Bragg grating feedback elements is also starting to address questions regarding the high-power optical stability of ber Bragg gratings. D. Fiber Raman Lasers and Ampliers Prior to the advent of Er3+ -doped ber optical ampliers, the two main technologies directed toward optical ampliers were semiconductor doped optical ampliers and ber Raman ampliers. There was a signicant amount of work in the mid- to late-1980s on the use of Raman amplication in long lengths of germanosilicate bers [48]. While these ampliers possessed many attractive features such as low noise, polarization insensitive gain, and the ability to achieve amplication in ordinary germanosilicate transmission ber, it was primarily the unavailability of high-power diode laser pump sources that prevented their acceptance. In stimulated Raman scattering, light is scattered by optical vibrational modes (optical phonons) of the material, resulting in frequency down-shifted Stokes light. In optical bers doped with the index of refraction modifying element GeO2 , this shift occurs at approximately 450 cm 1 (or 13.2 THz) [49]. Although the nonlinear cross section for this process is relatively weak in germanosilicate bers, the long lengths and low loss of optical bers more than compensate for the weak crosssection. The potential of both ber ampliers and lasers based on Raman scattering was rst demonstrated in the 1980s by Stolen, Lin, and co-workers, where Raman lasers operating between 0.32.0 m were constructed [50]. However, it was not clear from the early work that a Raman ber laser could be pumped by a practical laser source (i.e., semiconductor laser based) or that an efcient continuous-wave (CW) pumped Raman ber laser would be possible. The recent availability of high single-mode ber coupled output powers from claddingpumped ber lasers and the ability to construct ultra low loss ber cavities through the use of ber Bragg gratings have dramatically changed this situation. The emergence of ber Bragg grating technology in the past few years has made it possible to fabricate numerous highly reecting elements directly in the core of germanosilicate bers with reection widths of several nm and out of band insertion losses of a few hundredths of a dB. This technology coupled

with that of cladding-pumped ber lasers, has made a whole new class of ber lasers based on intracavity pumping possible. Intracavity pumped ber lasers based on multiple rare-earth ber laser cavities or nonlinear effects in germanosilicate bers become possible, as shown in Fig. 4. In the case of stimulated Raman conversion, pump light is introduced through one set of highly reecting ber Bragg gratings. The cavity consists of several hundred meters to a kilometer of germanosilicate ber. An output set of ber Bragg gratings consists of a set of . The output high reecting gratings through Raman order wavelength of Raman order is coupled out by means of a %) ber grating. The intermediate partially reecting ( Raman Stokes orders are contained by sets of highly reecting ber Bragg gratings and this power is circulated until it is nearly entirely converted to the next successive Raman Stokes order. These resonant laser cavities have been termed cascaded Raman lasers. Modeling of these cascaded Raman resonators have highlighted the high CW conversion efciencies that can be achieved in low loss ber cavities [51]. It has been shown that it is possible to efciently convert the output of a Yb3+ cladding pumped ber laser at 1117 nm by ve Raman Stokes orders to 1480 nm with a cascaded Raman laser resonator, as shown schematically in Fig. 4. Diode laser pumped, single-mode ber output powers of 1.7 W at a slope conversion efciency of 46% have been obtained [52]. The spectral output of the Raman ber laser is between 12 nm wide and is controlled by the widths of the ber Bragg gratings. The suppression ratio between the desired nal output Raman order and the intermediate Raman orders is typically 15 dB. High single-mode ber coupled powers at around 1480 nm are desired for pumping of high-power erbium-doped postampliers as well as remote pumping of in-line erbiumdoped bers [53]. In remote pumping, where the goal is to maximize the distance between active repeaters, one desires high-power 1480 nm pump sources at the terminal ends. A high-power postamplier, usually an Er/Yb co-doped ber amplier, is used as a power amplier at the transmitter end. Up to 26 dBm at 1558 nm has been transmitted, through the use of an SBS suppression technique which applied a series of tones on a phase modulator. High-power 1480 nm lasers can be used at both the transmitter and receiver terminals in order to pump remote Er3+ postampliers and preampliers, respectively. Using a high-power Er/Yb postamplier and

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Fig. 5. Schematic of 529 km repeaterless transmission experiment at 2.5 Gb/s using three high-power 1480 nm Raman lasers and a

+26 dBm booster amplier.

Fig. 6. Schematic of 1.3

m Raman

amplier.

three high-power Raman lasers at 1480 nm, as shown in Fig. 5, a repeaterless transmission distance of 529 km at 2.5 Gb/s was achieved [54]. Amplication can also be achieved by use of the cascaded Raman resonator approach. In particular an amplier at 1.31 m has been demonstrated [55]. This was the rst silica ber-based optical ber amplier to be demonstrated at 1.31 m. Gains of 40 dB and output powers of +24 dBm were obtained in an intracavity pumped Raman amplier. As shown schematically in Fig. 6, a high-power cladding-pumped laser at 1.06 m is injected into a long length of germanosilicate ber. At each end of the germanosilicate ber are three highly reecting ber Bragg gratings, at the rst three Stokes frequencies from 1060 nm. The pump light at 1060 nm is therefore efciently converted to pump light at 1240 nm. A 1.3- m signal injected through this structure will experience amplication since it is at the next Stokes Raman shift from the 1240-nm pump light. The efciency of the Raman amplication process is controlled both by amount of germania dopant in the ber core and the cross-sectional area of the ber core. Gains of 25 dB for only 350 mW of pump power have been obtained in highly germania doped, small core bers [56]. A novel ring geometry which did not utilize ber Bragg gratings was also used to generate third Stokes light at 1240 nm and amplication at 1.31 m [57]. The theoretical noise gure contribution from signalspontaneous beating for Raman ampliers has been shown to be 3 dB [58]. However, systems tests of Raman ampliers have uncovered other sources of noise that generally are not important in Er3+ -doped ber ampliers. The rst source is the coupling of intensity uctuations from the pump light to the signal. The fundamental cause of this noise is the lack

of a long upper-state lifetime to buffer the Raman gain from uctuations in the pump intensity. It has been shown that when a counterpropagating amplier geometry is used, the transit time of the amplier can be used to average gain uctuations due to the pump [59]. Last, double-Raleigh and Stimulated Brillioun scattering can also give signicant contributions to the noise gure of Raman ampliers because of the long lengths of ber used. However, the total noise gure of a Raman amplier can be kept at acceptably low levels by proper amplier design. For example, by limiting the ber lengths used and constructing a two-stage amplier, as has been shown in a 2.5 Gb/s systems test of a 1.3- m Raman amplier with a gain of 30 dB and an output power of 15 dBm [60], good systems performance was obtained. Analog grade performance has been demonstrated in a 23 dBm Raman power amplier at 1.31 m [61]. Raman ampliers have also been proposed for applications in WDM systems at both 1.31 and 1.55 m because of their potential for achieving distributed gain, large bandwidth, and low noise. However, crosstalk between the channels in a Raman amplier has always been a concern. Crosstalk in Raman ampliers is mediated by the pump. Each wavelength channel causes a patterned pump depletion which is superimposed on the other channels in the amplication process. It has been shown that crosstalk depends on the modulation frequency of the channels and the pump. Crosstalk in the forward and backward congurations strongly differ because of the walk off between the signal and pump [62]. Backward pumping has been shown to result in a dramatic reduction of the crosstalk bandwidth such that Raman ampliers operated in this conguration should exhibit adequate performance in high-capacity WDM systems. The amount of crosstalk in a counterpropagating Raman amplier WDM experiment has been shown to be negligible [63]. In this experiment, a single channel 10 Gb/s 10 Gb/s system purely by system was upgraded to a 4 Raman amplication in an existing ber span. When both the pump source, typically a ber laser source and the signal are depolarized over the interaction length of the Raman amplier, the amplier is polarization insensitive. Polarization insensitivity to the 0.2 dB level has been veried with Raman ampliers.

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The low noise capability of a properly designed Raman amplier using ber Bragg gratings was also highlighted in a 1.3 m systems test of a Raman preamplier [64]. In this demonstration, a 10-Gb/s receiver using a Raman preamplifer with a gain of 40 dB exhibited a systems noise gure of 4.4 dB and a sensitivity of 151 photons/b. This experiment, which demonstrated performance comparable to erbium preampliers at 1.55 m, was the rst demonstration of a low noise Raman preamplier. Because one is no longer constrained to particular transitions of rare-earth ions in the cascaded Raman approach, lasing or amplication should be possible from 1.1 to 2.0 m. Since the bandwidth of the Raman process is broad and the pump wavelength obtained from a Nd3+ or Yb3+ -doped cladding pumped laser can be varied by nearly 100 nm, one can efciently down-convert to virtually any arbitrary wavelength with the use of the appropriate ber Bragg gratings. The combination of cladding-pumped ber lasers and Raman resonators both dened by ber Bragg gratings will be a powerful combination in high-power laser and amplier coverage of the infrared. Numerous additional applications for these lasers and ampliers are likely to emerge.
Fig. 7. Pigtailed ber output of a 1.55 m hybrid laser versus current at 20 C. Insert: Device schematic illustrating the AR-coated gain chip, out-coupling lensed ber, and grating (from [74]).

III. GRATING-STABILIZED LASER DIODES The interactions of laser diodes with ber Bragg gratings have been studied for many years; initially with gratings etched into the side of polished bers [65][67] and now with intracore UV-written gratings [68][80]. Three main types of ber grating-stabilized laser diodes have been reported to date. 1) single-mode lasers [65][74] which have a grating located close to the output facet of the diode to ensure stable singlefrequency operation, 2) mode-locked lasers [67], [75] in which the diode is modulated at a multiple of the characteristic external cavity frequency, and 3) coherence-collapsed lasers [76][78] where the distance between the grating and the diode is greater then the coherence length of the diode modes. As described in the following, each type of grating-stabilized laser has unique characteristics and advantages which make it suitable for specic applications. A Bragg grating written directly in the ber pigtail of a semiconductor laser constitutes a simple and effective means of controlling the wavelength and other output characteristics of the device. Compared to other types of external feedback techniques such as those requiring a bulk diffraction grating, ber grating stabilization offers much lower cost and greater reliability which makes it suitable for a number of systems applications. In many cases, ber grating-stabilized lasers also compare favorably well to DFB (distributed feedback) or DBR (distributed back reector) type laser diodes, rst because they are based on FabryPerot-type laser diodes, which are easier to manufacture and lower cost. Also, ber gratings provide much better wavelength accuracy and stability than semiconductor waveguide gratings, which leads to better device performance. Because of the low temperature sensitivity of ber gratings, the stabilized diodes can often operate without the use of a thermoelectric cooler, which results in lower power consumption and cost. These unique advantages are highlighted in the following examples. 1) Single-Mode Operation: With the emergence of WDM systems with wavelength spacings down to 0.8 nm (100 GHz), wavelength-control is becoming a critical issue, particularly in the design of optical transmitters. Fiber gratings can provide the required wavelength accuracy and stability demanded by WDM systems. They can be manufactured repeatably with a wavelength tolerance of less than 0.1 nm and wavelength stability can be ensured by temperature control or temperature-compensated packaging [81]. Because of this remarkable wavelength accuracy and stability, ber gratings can be used as absolute wavelength references to lock the wavelength of WDM transmitters [81], [82]. In this application, the wavelength of a DFB or DBR laser is compared to that of a reference ber grating which generates an error signal that is fed back to the temperature controller of the laser. A ber grating can also play a more active role by being part of the laser cavity itself (see Fig. 7). In this conguration, the grating is used both as a stable and accurate wavelength reference as well as a narrow-band optical feedback element. This type of hybrid laser has been studied for many years [65], [66] and has recently seen renewed interest because of its potential as a low-cost WDM source [68][74]. In general, the output of an AR-coated laser diode is coupled to a lensed optical ber with a narrow-band (0.10.3 nm) grating in close proximity to the ber tip. The total cavity length can thus be very short (down to a few millimeters) which results in stable, single-frequency operation. One of the main advantages of hybrid lasers over conventional DFB or DBR lasers is their relative insensitivity to changes in temperature or drive current. In a single-mode all-

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Fig. 9. Eye diagram of hybrid laser transmission experiment at 2.48 Gb/s (from [74]).

Fig. 8. Measured power spectrum of hybrid laser (0.1 nm resolution).

semiconductor laser, a change of temperature or current creates a variation of the optical pathlength of the laser, which leads to a corresponding change in emission wavelength (3) In a hybrid laser, the same change in optical pathlength results in a wavelength shift of only (4) where is the total optical cavity pathlength which includes the semiconductor and ber sections plus the airgap. Because is in general much larger than , and because optical bers have a low sensitivity to environmental changes, the temperature and current dependence of the hybrid laser are usually much less than that of a DFB or DBR laser. This simple observation has important consequences. It rst means that the wavelength of a hybrid laser should be sufciently stable that it can be used as a WDM source without an external wavelength reference and even without a thermoelectric cooler [73]. Second, it makes it possible to perform direct highspeed modulation with a very low level of chirp [73], [74]. The wavelength stability of a hybrid laser can be further enhanced by shortening the semiconductor chip, as was recently demonstrated using diodes as short as 150 m [72]. In this experiment, the wavelength change with temperature was only 0.007 nm/ C as opposed for 0.01 to 0.02 nm/ C for longer devices. Figs. 7 and 8 show typical LI (optical output power versus drive current) and spectral characteristics of a 500 m long AR-coated ( ) InGaAsP/InP diode coupled to a 30% reectivity ber grating [74]. As can be seen on these two graphs, high powers can be achieved without mode-hopping and with good linearity and high side-mode suppression. This device featured a linewidth of 100250 kHz and a relative intensity noise (RIN) level below 135 dB/Hz in the range from 20 MHz to 10 GHz. Fig. 9 shows an open eye diagram measured in a back-to-back transmission experiment involving the same hybrid laser directly modulated at 2.48 Gb/s.

Fig. 10. Schematic of single-mode grating-stabilized laser diode with erbium ber external cavity (from [71]).

The quality of the AR-coating is critical to the performance of this device, as even weak residual reections ( 10 3 ) can result in kinks in the output power and mode-hops as the drive current is ramped up. The use of a laser diode with a curved waveguide, which can reduce the front facet reectivity to less than 10 4 , has been proposed to eliminate this problem [73]. An even more important issue is the packaging of the device, which will be the main factor in determining the longterm reliability of hybrid lasers. Perhaps the biggest challenge will be to design a package where the distance between the diode and the ber is kept constant to within a fraction of a wavelength in order to prevent mode-hops. As can be seen from the above examples, the optical properties of hybrid lasers compare well to that of a DFB. The attractiveness of the hybrid laser approach becomes more obvious however if we consider that the hybrid laser would not only replace a DFB laser, but potentially a whole system comprising an external modulator, an external wavelength reference with feedback circuitry, as well as the DFB. Clearly, the hybrid laser could be the preferred approach for a lowcost WDM source, provided that its long-term reliability can be demonstrated. A less conventional approach for single-mode operation of a 1.55 m ber-grating external cavity diode was recently demonstrated (see Fig. 10) [71]. In this experiment, a length of unpumped erbium-doped ber was used between the ber grating and the diode. When the external cavity laser operates in a single-longitudinal mode, a standing-wave intensity pattern is set up in the ber which, at high power, periodically saturates the erbium absorption. This spatial hole burning causes a reduction of the cavity loss for this particular longitudinal mode. For other modes, however, the loss reduction is less important as they have a different intensity distribution and therefore interact with unbleached sections of the ber. Spatial-

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Fig. 11. Schematic of coherence-collapse 980-nm grating-stabilized laser diode. Diode has low reectivity (not AR) coating on output facet. (a)

(b) Fig. 13. Power tracking of 980-nm laser diodes. Upper: without grating stabilization, mode-hops cause noticeable power uctuations. Lower: with grating-stabilization, coherence-collapse eliminates sudden power changes (from [77]).

Fig. 12. laser.

Output spectrum of commercial grating-stabilized 980-nm pump

hole burning in the rare-earth ber thus produces a self-written narrow bandpass lter that increases the mode discrimination of the laser and reinforces single-frequency operation. An interesting aspect of this laser conguration is that the singlemode stability is fairly independent of the external cavity length as the optical bandwidth of the self-written lter is inversely proportional to the ber length, which compensates for the denser mode-spacing. Stable single-frequency operation has thus been observed for cavity lengths of up to 3 m which resulted in sub-kilohertz bandwidths. 2) Mode-Locked Operation: Fiber grating can also be used to provide feedback for actively mode-locked laser diodes. In this application, diodes with angled waveguides [67] or high quality AR-coating [75] are also required so that the grating provides the only source of feedback. Mode-locking is initiated by modulating the injection current of the laser at the characteristic frequency of the optical cavity, which is determined by the position of the ber grating. The reection spectrum of the grating limits the number of modes that can oscillate and thus determines the duration of the mode-locked pulses. This simple conguration, therefore, offers full control of the pulse width and frequency over a wide range of values. Using a chirped ber grating allows the laser to be tuned over a range of mode-locking frequencies as the cavity length is then wavelength-dependent [75]; changing the modulation frequency forces the laser to readjust its wavelength to create the right cavity length. High-quality, high-peak power pulses with repetition rates up to 2.4 GHz have been demonstrated,

making this laser an attractive source for high-speed soliton transmission [75]. 3) Coherence-Collapse Operation: One of the modes of operation of a laser diode under external feedback is known as coherence-collapse [83]. The coherence-collapse regime can be observed by providing a sufciently strong source of feedback, in this case a ber grating, and positioning it beyond the coherence length of the laser diode (see Fig. 11) [76], [77]. As opposed to the previous types of gratingstabilized laser diodes mentioned in this article, this particular conguration does not require an AR-coated semiconductor laser which means that it is compatible with commercially available FabryPerot diodes [77]. In the absence of grating feedback, the FabryPerot laser therefore operates normally, in a number of well-dened longitudinal modes of the diode cavity. In the presence of incoherent feedback from the grating, the laser enters the coherence-collapse regime which is characterized by a substantial broadening of the laser diode modes and a strong reduction of the coherence length of the laser. The lasing spectrum then consists of a multitude of external cavity modes whose amplitude is modulated by the mode structure of the diode and the reection spectrum of the grating (see Fig. 12). As for the previous types of grating stabilization, coherence-collapse forces the diode to operate within the optical bandwidth of the ber grating and thus stabilizes the laser wavelength. Although the high-frequency noise of the laser is greatly increased due to the effects of mode beating, the large number of modes and their lack of coherence averages out the low-frequency power uctuations normally associated with mode-hopping, which greatly stabilizes the output power for low-speed applications (see Fig. 13) [77]. Grating-stabilized 980-nm laser diodes operating in coherence-collapse are now widely used as pump sources

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Fig. 14. Power versus current (LI) characteristics of a grating-stabilized 980-nm laser.

in commercial EDFAs [77], [78]. In this application, the high-frequency noise of the pump lasers is of no adverse consequence due to the slow response time of erbium ions, whereas the absence of low frequency mode-hopping noise improves the power stability of the amplier. Gratingstabilized 980-nm pump lasers typically consists of standard high-power 980 nm FabryPerot lasers coupled to a ber grating. The grating normally has a reectivity of a few percent, comparable to the output facet reectivity of the diode, and is positioned a few tens of centimeters down the ber. Because the ber grating has an extremely low loss and a low reectivity, the output power of a stabilized pump laser is essentially the same as a nonstabilized one. Fig. 14 shows the typical LI characteristics of a commercial gratingstabilized laser, with approximately 90 mW of ber-coupled at the recommended operating current. The improved wavelength and power stability of a gratingstabilized pump laser both contribute to the overall reliability of an EDFA. The accurate wavelength control of the pump laser also facilitates the optimization of the amplier design and in particular of the erbium ber length. An additional benet of coherence-collapse is that grating-stabilized 980-nm pump lasers are much less sensitive to feedback compared to their nonstabilized counterparts. Measurements have showed that grating-stabilized 980-nm lasers remain unaffected by optical feedback up to about 20 dB whereas nonstabilized lasers can become unstable at the 40 dB feedback level [77]. Operation of grating-stabilized 980 nm pump laser at high powers without a thermoelectric cooler has recently been demonstrated [78]. This is made possible by the low temperature-dependence of the grating which keeps the laser wavelength sufciently constant over a wide temperature range. As can be seen in Fig. 15, the peak wavelength of the laser remains locked to the Bragg wavelength of the grating over a 75 C variation in outside temperature. Although the ASE peak becomes more prominent at the temperature extremes, over 90% of the power remains within 1 nm of the grating wavelength at all times. 4) Other Applications: Fiber grating stabilization of laser diodes is a simple and powerful technique that is nding

Fig. 15. Output spectrum of an uncooled grating-stabilized 980-nm laser at various temperatures (from [78]).

a multitude of applications, wherever narrow linewidth or operation at a specic wavelength is required. Examples of such applications that have been reported recently include sources for ber reectometry [79] and lidar [84]. As gratingstabilized diodes become more available, they are certain to nd uses in a variety of other research elds. IV. CONCLUSIONS Fiber Bragg gratings have clearly enhanced the performance of a variety of laser and ber amplier systems. The combination of high spectral selectivity and low resonator insertion loss of short period reective ber Bragg gratings have enabled a variety of devices that are not possible with conventional dichroic lter technology. Furthermore, the development of the complementary grating technology of long-period ber gratings have increased the number of applications and devices that are now possible. The ability to fabricate complex loss shaped gratings will a truly profound impact on wideband, gain-attened ampliers and hence WDM networks. New classes of ber laser devices, such as the intracavity cascaded Raman lasers, are now made possible with ber Bragg grating technology. Fiber lasers that were impractical with bulk reector technology have now become viable commercial products with ber Bragg grating feedback elements. Fiber gratings also greatly impacted the performance of erbium ber ampliers in the form of gain attening lters, pump reectors, and pump laser stabilization gratings, as well as performing optical add/drop functions in dense WDM systems. Fiber Bragg gratings are quickly becoming an critical part of ber systems performance. Fiber gratings also enhance and extend the performance of laser diodes themselves. Fiber gratings have been shown to frequency stabilize 980-nm-pump lasers for pumping erbiumdoped ber ampliers, and have made coolerless operation of these pump lasers possible. Fiber gratings have been used

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to construct external cavity diodes lasers both to frequency lock and stabilize the single-mode output range of these diode lasers. Chirped ber gratings have also been used to construct mode-locked diode laser and soliton laser sources. These sources have been successfully demonstrated in a variety of systems tests. Fiber gratings will continue to be used in novel ways to complement and enhance the performance of diode laser sources.

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Jean-Luc Archambault graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique engineering school in Montreal, P.Q., Canada, in 1989 and received the Masters degree in ber optics from the same university in 1991. He received the Ph.D. degree at the University of Southampton, Southampton, U.K., in 1994 with a dissertation on ber Bragg gratings and their applications. After working at SDL Optics in British Columbia, Canada, for two years, he is now at Ciena Corporation, Linthicum, MD, developing components for WDM systems.

Stephen G. Grubb received the Ph.D. degree from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. He is with SDL, Inc., San Jose, CA, where he works on high-power ber ampliers and lasers. He formerly worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories (now Lucent Technologies), Holmdel, NJ, where he developed high-power 1.5 m ampliers and cascaded Raman lasers and ampliers. He also worked at Amoco Technology Company, where he was responsible for the rst demonstration of the Er/Yb codoped 1.5 m ber amplier.