Abstract
Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers have found widespread use in 1.55- μm systems. The design of the fiber structure for optimized performance has led to fibers with small mode field diameters,1 leading to a large mismatch in mode field between the Er-doped fiber (3-4 μm) and the transmission fiber (8-9 μm). Calculated splice losses between these fiber pairs are 1.9-3.4 dB, while fusion splices using standard splicing parameters for transmission fiber lead to splice losses of 0.5-1.0 dB. By optimizing the splicing parameters to allow modification of the core profile during fusion2 the mode fields have been nearly matched and the splice loss has been reduced to ~0.15 dB per splice. To achieve the necessary mode field expansion, heating times of up to 14 s were used. The curve of splice loss vs heating time (Fig. 1) shows optimization of the fusion time for the optimum arc intensity. The mode field diameters, for a variety of splice conditions, were calculated using the Petermann II definition from measurements of the far-field power profiles. Those calculations indicate that the mode field diameter of the fiber can be expanded by more than a factor of 2 during splicing.
© 1992 Optical Society of America
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