Fiber-to-fiber gain in Nd-doped aluminium oxide waveguide amplifiers
Abstract
Fiber-to-fiber gain is demonstrated in waveguide amplifiers fabricated from Al 2 O 3 :Nd 3+ films. The Nd-doped aluminium oxide film is deposited using reactive sputtering, resulting in a polycrystalline film with an approximate ion concentration of 2.2 × 10 20 ions/cm 3 . An amplifier with a length of 5.5 cm is optically pumped at 805 nm, following a bi-directional pumping scheme. For an incident signal input power of -14.9 dBm, the amplifier shows an external gain at a signal wavelength of 1064 nm as large as 14.5 dB, limited by the available pump power. Under those conditions, a noise figure of 8.5 dB was measured. These results pave the way towards on-chip amplification for applications including biomedical imaging, spectroscopy, atmospheric LiDAR, and quantum technologies.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Photorefractive and Nonlinear Optics
Photonic Crystal and Fiber Optics
Solid State Laser Technologies
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Optics Express
- Publisher
- Optica Publishing Group
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 4522–4522
- Publication date
- 21 January 2026
- Language
- EN