Tutorials and Case Studies
RP Photonics is proudly offering a huge amount of high quality scientific and technological content to the public. Its RP Photonics Encyclopedia is famous, but we also offer very useful tutorials and case studies.
Tutorials
In the following, we offer some comprehensive physics-based tutorials, from which you can learn a lot. While each encyclopedia article targets a specific article keyword, a tutorial introduces the readers into a certain subject area related to a larger number of encyclopedia articles. It often also discusses issues of practical importance.
Dr. Paschotta has authored these three popular SPIE Field Guides. Click on the images!
Passive Fiber Optics
This is a comprehensive introduction to fiber optics, focusing on passive (non-amplifying) fibers. It explains basic principles as well as practical aspects.
#fibers #pulses
Fiber Amplifiers
The tutorial discusses rare earth ions, how to calculate optical powers and ionic excitations in amplifiers, and many other optics: ASE, forward vs. backward pumping, double-clad fibers, amplification of light pulses, amplifier noise, and multi-stage amplifiers.
#fibers #amplifiers #pulses
Modeling of Fiber Amplifiers and Lasers
Modeling can create a deep and quantitative understanding of how such devices work. On that basis, both scientific research and industrial development can become far more efficient; instead of “fishing in the dark”, one can more systematically move forward and produce results.
#fibers #amplifiers #pulses
Modeling of Pulse Amplification
This tutorial treats in some detail various aspects of the amplification of light pulses, with particular focus on fiber amplifiers, although many details are similar for solid-state bulk amplifiers.
#fibers #amplifiers #pulses
Case Studies
Our case studies nicely complement the tutorials and encyclopedia articles. Each one provides a quantitative analysis of a concrete case of practical importance. Dive into these studies to improve your understanding of the physics and technology background and of suitable methods to investigate such things. You may also get inspired for further work.
You may deselect some topics to more easily find what is of interest for you:
modes | dispersion | telecom | amplifiers |
lasers | ASE | pulses |
Mode Structure of Multimode Fibers
We explore various properties of guided modes of multimode fibers. We also test how the mode structure of such a fiber reacts to certain changes of the index profile, e.g. to smoothening of the index step.
#modes
Dispersion Engineering for Telecom Fibers
We explore different ways of optimizing refractive index profile for specific chromatic dispersion properties of telecom fibers. This also involves automatic optimizations.
#modes #dispersion #telecom
Telecom Fiber with Parabolic Index Profile
We investigate how intermodal dispersion of a multimode fiber can be minimized with a parabolic doping profile.
#modes #telecom
Erbium-doped Fiber Amplifier for a Long-wavelength Signal
Amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) turns out to be a limiting factor, requiring a dual-stage amplifier design.
#amplifiers #ASE #telecom
Erbium-doped Fiber Amplifier for Rectangular Nanosecond pulses
Specifically, we deal with deformations of the pulse shape due to gain saturation. These can be minimized by pre-distorting the input pulses.
#amplifiers #pulses
Erbium-doped Fiber Amplifier for Multiple Signals
Here, we optimize an amplifier for equal output powers of signals spanning a substantial wavelength range. There is a trade-off between power efficiency and noise performance.
#amplifiers #telecom
Amplified Spontaneous Emission in Yb-doped Fibers
We study various aspects of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) in ytterbium-doped fibers – for example, why it is different in forward and backward direction, how the fiber length can have a crucial impact, and how the fiber core diameter matters.
#amplifiers #ASE
Ytterbium-doped Double-clad Fiber Amplifier
We develop a double-clad fiber amplifier with high gain, where we have to care about limiting losses by ASE.
#amplifiers #ASE
Ytterbium-doped 975-nm Fiber Lasers
We explore how to realize Yb-doped fiber lasers emitting at the tricky wavelength of 975 nm. This turns out to be challenging for devices with double-clad fibers due to ASE at longer wavelengths.
#lasers #ASE
Pulse Compression in a Fiber
We explore how we can spectrally broaden light pulses by self-phase modulation in a fiber and subsequently compress the pulses using a dispersive element. A substantial reduction in pulse duration by more than an order of magnitude is easily achieved, while the pulse quality is often not ideal.
#pulses #nonlinearities
Parabolic Pulses in a Fiber Amplifier
Wie explore the regime of parabolic pulse amplification in an Yb-doped single-mode fiber. We find suitable system parameters and investigate limiting effects.
#amplifier #pulses #nonlinearities
Numerical Experiments with Soliton Pulses in Fibers
We investigate various details of soliton pulse propagation in passive fibers, using numerical simulations.
#pulses #nonlinearities
Collision of Soliton Pulses in a Fiber
We let two soliton pulses collide in a fiber. Surprisingly, they survive such collisions, even if we involve solitons of higher order.
#pulses #nonlinearities
Soliton Self-frequency Shift
We numerically simulate the soliton self-frequency shift, which is caused by stimulated Raman scattering. Influences like higher-order dispersion are found to be quite relevant.
#pulses #nonlinearities
Solitons in a Fiber Amplifier
We investigate to which extent soliton pulses could be amplified in a fiber amplifier, preserving the soliton shape and compressing the pulses temporally.
#pulses #nonlinearities #amplifiers
Raman Scattering in a Fiber Amplifier
We investigate the effects of stimulated Raman scattering in an ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier for ultrashort pulses, considering three very different input pulse duration regimes. Surprisingly, the effect of Raman scattering always gets substantial only on the last meter, although the input peak powers vary by two orders of magnitude.
#amplifiers #pulses #nonlinearities
We have various smaller case studies made with our simulation and design software:
Various Resources
For more information on fiber optics, see also
If you are interested in laser development and physical modeling, you should see our presentation on the 'transparent laser'.
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