This award will investigate erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), already recognized as having changed the course of fiber optics research recently. EDFAs have emerged as the undisputed champion lightwave communications, and many experts believe that EDFAs will revolutionize long-distance optical communications, from video distribution to broadband networking. A new era has indeed dawned upon the fiber optics community. The work done will consolidate, and develop further, the work already done under a NSF- SGER award, in which a comprehensive theoretical computer model was developed. the model can predict the performance of any type of EDFA very accurately, as evidenced by the excellent agreement with published experimental results. Both theoretical and experimental research work will be done and shall concentrate on pumping in the 800 nm region. This is aimed at the eventual realization of low cost, very reliable, performance optimized and compact EDFA modules for use as power amplifiers, line repeaters and preamplifiers in a variety of application in lightwave technology. EDFAs offer the exciting possibility of developing completely transparent networks. The shall also investigate theoretically amplifiers for the 1300 nm region with neodymium doped fluoride glass, by considering optimized fiber design and different pumping configurations.
