A Wide-Band Thulium-Doped Silica Fibre Amplifier

We investigate a silica-based thulium-doped fibre amplifier, which is a promising candidate for an amplifying device in the S band, in detail using a single wavelength upconversion pumping scheme centred at 1064 nm. Our experimental results show that in terms of gain and noise figure, the bi-directional pumping scheme is the best one in the three pumping schemes, named forward, backward and bi-directional pumping schemes. The amplifier has a gain not only in the S band, but also in the C band, even in the L band. The gain is above 3 dB from 1525 nm to 1580 nm with a peak of 7.5 dB.