W-type and Graded-index bismuth-doped fibers for efficient lasers and amplifiers operating in E-band

In this paper, we focus on the fabrication and investigation of optical properties of W-type and Graded-index single-mode Bi-doped germanosilicate fibers. The laser and gain characteristics of Bi-doped fibers of new designs were studied. It was shown that by variation of doping profile, it is possible to change characteristic parameters (active absorption, unsaturable loss level) of the active medium and, as a consequence, achieve an improvement of the performance of the optical devices based on these types of fibers. As a progress one can consider the creation of a Bi-doped fiber laser operating at 1460 nm with a record efficiency of 72% using a relatively short active fiber (L = 75 m); and a 20-dB Bi-doped fiber amplifier (L = 120 m) with a pump power of 45 mW (for the input signal powers lower than 30 µW) having a high gain efficiency of 0.52 dB/mW. We suggest that the obtained results could be a driver for further investigation in this direction.