Laser-diode-pumped highly efficient gain-shifted thulium-doped fiber amplifier operating in the 1480-1510-nm band

We have developed a gain-shifted thulium-doped fiber amplifier (TDFA) with a high optical efficiency (29%) and a high output power (+21.5 dBm) operating in the 1480-1510-nm wavelength band by employing a novel laser diode pumping scheme of 1.4 and 1.56 μm. The results we obtained confirm the feasibility of applying our gain-shifted TDFA to practical wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) networks.