Pumping planar waveguide amplifiers using a coupled waveguide system

A novel scheme is presented that can be used to efficiently pump optical waveguide amplifiers. It is based on the coupling between two adjacent waveguides, where pump light is gradually coupled from a nonabsorbing pump waveguide into the amplifier waveguide. The coupling between the waveguides in such a configuration is calculated using an improved coupled mode theory (CMT). The proposed distributed coupling scheme can enhance the optical gain in systems that exhibit a reduced pumping efficiency at high pump power. A numerical example is given for a sensitized neodymium-doped polymer waveguide amplifier, in which the optical gain increases from 0.005 dB to 1.6 dB by changing from conventional butt-coupling to distributed coupling.