Investigation of the irradiation effect on erbium-doped fiber amplifiers composed by different density erbium-doped fibers

Two erbium-doped fibers (EDFs) with different densities, which can make the erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) achieve the same output power, have been irradiated by ⁶⁰Co at the same rate and same total dose. In addition, the irradiation effect on EDFA composed by different density EDFs is firstly analyzed in this paper. The experimental results indicate that, considering the length of EDF, the high density EDF can make the EDFA deteriorate less than the low that in the irradiation environment. Furthermore, the small change of the central wavelength and the half-wave width also confirm that the irradiation effect on EDFA chiefly introduces the transmission loss, but the physical mechanics of EDFA is not changed by the irradiation. The experimental results and conclusions will be a good reference for EDFA designers who are trying to apply the EDFA in an irradiation environment.