High gain/broadband oxide glasses for next generation Raman amplifiers

Interest in Raman amplification has undergone a revival due to the rapidly increasing bandwidth requirements for communications transmission, both for long haul and local area networks, and recent developments in the telecom fiber industry and diode laser technology. In contrast to rare earth doped fiber amplifiers, for which the range of wavelengths is fixed and limited, Raman gain bandwidths are larger and the operating wavelength is fixed only by the pump wavelength and the bandwidth of the Raman active medium. In this context, glasses are the material of choice for this application due to their relatively broad spectral response, and ability of making them into optical fiber.; This dissertation summarizes findings on different oxide-based glasses that have been synthesized and characterized for their potential application as Raman gain media. Two main glass families were investigated: phosphate-based glass matrices for broadband Raman gain application and TeO2-based glasses for high Raman gain amplification. A phosphate network was preferred for the broadband application since the phosphate Raman active modes can provide amplification above 1000 cm-1, whilst TeO2-based glasses were selected for the high gain application due to their enhanced nonlinearities and polarizabilities among the other oxide-based network formers. The results summarized in this dissertation show that phosphate-based glasses can provide Raman amplification bandwidths of up to 40 THz, an improvement of almost 5 times the bandwidth of SiO2. On the other hand, tellurite-based glasses appear to be promising candidates for high gain discrete Raman applications, providing peak Raman gain coefficients of up to 50 times higher than SiO 2, at 1064 nm.; Although, visible spontaneous Raman scattering cross-section measurement is the most frequently used tool for estimating the strength and spectral distribution of Raman gain in materials, especially glasses, there are some issues that one needs to be aware when conducting these measurements near the absorption band edge of the material. This led to the detection of an inherent frequency-dispersion in the Raman susceptibility and a resonant enhancement phenomenon when measurements were conducted near the absorption edge of the material.