Optical amplification in Er/sup 3+/ doped SiO/sub 2/-TiO/sub 2/ photonic crystals

A time domain analysis of light amplification in an erbium doped silica-titania photonic crystal is reported. The investigation is performed by means of a home-made computer code which exploits the auxiliary differential equation scheme combined with the finite difference time domain technique to solve Maxwell's equations and the rate equations. The simulation model takes into account the pump and input signal propagation, the secondary transitions pertaining to the ion-ion interactions and exploits the optical, spectroscopic and geometrical parameters measured on the fabricated waveguide.