Highly ytterbium-doped silica fibers with low photo-darkening

Phosphorus co-doping is known to reduce clustering levels of rare earth ions in silica hosts. In this paper, ytterbium-doped silica fibers with approximately 8.9 wt% Yb(2)O(3), up to approximately 4700 dB/m peak core absorption at 976 nm, and low photo-darkening are demonstrated using high phosphorus co-doping. Measured gain as high as approximately 7 dB/cm is demonstrated in the fiber.