Abstract

The last year has seen the emergence of praseodymium doped fluoride fibre amplifiers (PDFFA’s) as a means of providing optical amplification within the important second telecommunications window around 1.3µm [1], These devices have already demonstrated many of the attractive characteristics of the ubiquitous erbium doped fibre amplifier (EDFA) and are currently the subject of intense international research. Unlike EDFA’s, the gain mechanism within the praseodymium doped fluoride fibre amplifier is 4-level in nature and therefore must be modelled in a slightly different way to its erbium counterpart[2,3].

© 1992 Optical Society of America