Abstract

Commercial erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) are pumped by semiconductor lasers at either 980nm or 1480nm wavelength. Although 980nm pumping offers the well-known advantages of lower noise, greater gain-slope efficiency, and lower power consumption, until recently concerns about catastrophic optical mirror damage (COMD) have limited the use of 980nm pump lasers in telecom applications. Reliability data from field deployment of 980nm-pumped EDFAs in an 2.5 Gb/s long-distance fiber link between Salt Lake City and Chicago has shown that the facet passivation technology developed for GaAs-based lasers at IBM has successfully prevented front-facet COMD of the pumps. The results of over 4 million device hours of operation were recently presented by Pirelli and Lasertron at OFC ’95 in San Diego [1].

© 1995 Optical Society of America