Proton Irradiation Response of Hole-Assisted Carbon Coated Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers

Sylvain Girard (1) , Laurent Arnaud (2) , Emmanuel Pinsard (2) , Melanie Raine (3) , Thierry Robin (2) , Benoit Cadier (2) , Diego Di Francesca (1) , Philippe Paillet (3) , M. Gaillardin (3) , Duhamel Olivier (3) , Claude Marcandella (3) , M. Boutiller (4) , Ayoub Ladaci (1) , Aziz Boukenter (1) , Youcef Ouerdane (1)

1 LHC - Laboratoire Hubert Curien
2 IxFiber - IxFiber SAS
3 DAM/DIF - DAM Île-de-France
4 CNES - Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse]

We investigated the behavior of a new class of erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) when exposed to 63 MeV protons. The EDFA is designed with a radiation hardened hole-assisted carbon coated (HACC) Er3 + -doped optical fiber. The particular structure of this HACC fiber allows to permanently incorporate an optimal amount of D2 or H2 gases into its core, reducing its radiation sensitivity without degrading the EDFA performances. Irradiations up to a fluence of 7.5 ×1011 p/cm2 confirm the excellent tolerance of this HACC-EDFA component. It exhibits a limited decrease of ~ 0.6 dB of its ~ 27 dB gain for this fluence corresponding to an ionization dose of 100 krad(Si). Such a device can then survive to the radiative environments associated with both today's space missions and future more challenging applications.

Domains: Engineering Sciences [physics]

Sylvain Girard, Laurent Arnaud, Emmanuel Pinsard, Melanie Raine, Thierry Robin, et al.. Proton Irradiation Response of Hole-Assisted Carbon Coated Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers . IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, 2014, 61 (6), pp.3309 - 3314. ⟨10.1109/TNS.2014.2360853⟩. ⟨ujm-01185930⟩