Proton Irradiation Response of Hole-Assisted Carbon Coated Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers

• Published in: IEEE transactions on nuclear science 2014-12, Vol.61 (6), p.3309-3314
• Main Authors: Girard, S., Laurent, A., Pinsard, E., Raine, M., Robin, T., Cadier, B., Di Francesca, D., Paillet, P., Gaillardin, M., Duhamel, O., Marcandella, C., Boutillier, M., Ladaci, A., Boukenter, A., Ouerdane, Y.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Carbon; Engineering Sciences; Erbium; erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA); Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers; Ionizing radiation; optical amplifiers; Optical fibers; Protons; Radiation effects; radiations; total ionizing dose (TID)
• ISSN: 0018-9499; 1558-1578
• DOI: 10.1109/TNS.2014.2360853

We investigated the behavior of a new class of erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) when exposed to 63 MeV protons. The EDFA is designed with a radiation hardened hole-assisted carbon coated (HACC) Er 3 + -doped optical fiber. The particular structure of this HACC fiber allows to permanently incorporate an optimal amount of D 2 or H 2 gases into its core, reducing its radiation sensitivity without degrading the EDFA performances. Irradiations up to a fluence of 7.5 ×10 11 p/cm 2 confirm the excellent tolerance of this HACC-EDFA component. It exhibits a limited decrease of ~ 0.6 dB of its ~ 27 dB gain for this fluence corresponding to an ionization dose of 100 krad(Si). Such a device can then survive to the radiative environments associated with both today's space missions and future more challenging applications.