Low-pump-power, short-fiber copropagating dual-pumped (800 and 1050 nm) thulium-doped fiber amplifier.

Using optical frequency-domain reflectometry to reveal the gain distribution and allow us to optimize a thulium-doped fiber amplifier, we have demonstrated 18-dB gain by employing only 5 m of a 2000-parts-in-10(6)-Tm-doped fiber pumped with 145 mW of power at dual wavelengths of 800 and 1050 nm. The role of the 800-nm pump, which by itself does not permit population inversion, was clearly observed experimentally.

Direct measurement of cascaded nonlinearity in lithium niobate channel waveguides.

We report on interferometric measurements of nonlinear phase shifts of the fundamental mode that are due to cascading in a second-harmonic-generation experiment in lithium niobate channel waveguides. With temperature tuning of the wave-vector mismatch the nonlinear phase shifts were adjustable in sign and magnitude. Varying the wave-vector matching condition along the waveguide leads to large phase shifts with low depletion and dispersion of the fundamental.