Design of active devices based on rare-earth-doped glass/glass ceramic: from the material characterization to the device parameter refinement

The accurate knowledge of the rare-earth spectroscopic parameters is fundamental for the design of both fiber and integrated active devices. The lifetimes, the branching ratios, the up-conversion, the cross-relaxation, the energy transfer coefficients of the rare-earths must be preliminarily identified before the design. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) is an efficient global search approach; when applied to rare-earth-doped host materials and devices, it permits the rare-earth spectroscopic characterization starting from optical gain measurements. The model for the peculiar case of a SiO2 - SnO2 : Er3+ glass ceramic system is illustrated. Two different, direct and indirect, pumping schemes are considered for the rare-earth spectroscopic characterization. In the direct pumping scheme, a pump at 378 nm wavelength is used to excite the erbium ions. The SnO2 does not take part in the excitation process. On the contrary, in the indirect pumping scheme the SnO2 is involved by exploiting the absorption band around 307 nm wavelength via a proper pump. In this case, the energy transfer between the SnO2 and the Er3+ ions occurs during the amplification process. The fabricated SiO2 - SnO2 : Er3+ glass ceramic slab waveguide is simulated via a finite element method (FEM) code and a homemade code is used to solve the rate equations. In order to identify the value of the SnO2-Er3+ energy transfer coefficient, the ratio between the two simulated optical gains at 1533 nm wavelength, with the direct and indirect pumping schemes, is compared with the ratio between the two emission intensity measurements.