Design of erbium-doped triangular photonic-crystal-fiber-based amplifiers

The amplification properties of erbium-doped triangular photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) are analyzed by varying the pitch, the hole diameter, and the dopant radius by means of a full-vector finite-element modal formulation combined with a population and propagation rate equation solver. Fiber designs which allow us to greatly reduce splice losses are presented and it is demonstrated that PCF amplifiers may deliver gains of more than 47 dB with splice losses lower than 0.3 dB.