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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.

SPIE Field Guide to Lasers
SPIE Field Guide to Laser Pulse Generation
SPIE Field Guide to Optical Fiber Technology

Dr. Paschotta has authored these three popular SPIE Field Guides. Click on the images!

Passive Fiber Optics

glass fiber

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

fiber amplifier

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

Stark level manifolds

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

pulse in amplifier

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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