Ytterbium-Codoping in Thulium Doped Silica Fiber

Abstract

A novel ytterbium-thulium codoping scheme is presented taking advantage of the fact that ytterbium codoping in thulium could facilitate population inversion between the relevant energy levels, through a cross energy transfer process between Tm3+ and Yb3+. A set of nonlinear coupled ODEs which govern the dynamics of optical amplication in the ytterbium-thulium codoped material system was established based on the rate equations and propagation equations. The results demonstrated that the ytterbium to thulium energy transfer process is significant and beneficial.