Investigations on europium aluminum incorporated polymer composite optical waveguide amplifier

The gain performance of 50-iun core diameter graded-index (GI) multimode europium aluminum benzyl methacrylate (Eu-Al/BzMA) waveguide was investigated by numerically solving rate and propagation equations using MATLAB. At a fixed waveguide length of 10 cm and gain medium concentration of 13 wt.%, optical gain was found to be dependent on pump power and input signal power. This paper utilized a 532 nm wavelength pump with power varied from 100 mW to 500 mW, together with low (-30 dBm) and high (0 dBm) input signal powers, within the amplification range of 580 to 640 nm wavelength. With the highest pumping power of 500 mW and the lowest input signal power of -30 dBm, a 29-dB optical gain with wavelength of 617 nm was observed from forward pumping amplification. For comparison, an identical waveguide in terms of properties was fabricated through an innovative fabrication method for polymer waveguide - the Mosquito method. The fabricated waveguide was then experimentally tested for -30 dBm input signal power with 200 mW pump power in the attempt to realize future real-world applications of short reach networks such as in Local Area Network (LAN) and in-vehicle optical interconnects.