Amplification properties of erbium-doped solid-core photonic bandgap fibers

A novel erbium-doped photonic bandgap fiber (PBGF) with honeycomb cladding and down-doped solid-core is proposed in this letter. This fiber is more practicable than reported erbium-doped air-core PBGF due to its Gaussian-like field distribution and low confinement loss. Theoretical analysis shows that it can largely improve pump efficiency (gain-to-pump-power ratio) for small pump power and reduce the optimum fiber length by 20%-50% for a wide range of pump powers, compared with erbium-doped step-index fiber.